Good morning. It's a convening of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. And because we're holding this meeting virtually, we'll do a book called Good Morning Commissioner, Brian. Good morning. I'm here. Good morning, Commissioner Hill. Good morning. I'm here. Good morning, Commissioner Skinner. Good morning. Good morning, Commissioner Maynard. Good morning. I'm here. Great. We're going to get started with our minutes. I'll turn to Commissioner Hill. Yes, I'm all set. Madam chair, I moved that the commission approved the minutes from the December 15, 2022 and December 29, 2022 public meetings that are included in the commissioner's packet, subject to any necessary corrections for typographical errors or other non material matters. Any edits? Thank you. Thank you. Any edits or corrections? All right. Commissioner Bryant. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Commissioner Maynard. Hi. I vote yes. I'll set. I'll set Commissioner Hill. We are all set. Good job to the legal counsel. Thank you. Great. So I'm returning right to commissioner update and it's upfront because I do. With my fellow commissioners, we have a. An important announcement last week, executive director Karen Wells submitted a letter of resignation to the five of us. That's a big smile. And I'm hoping it's a smile of pride because of all that she's accomplished in that role. Karen's letter notes that she'll be stepping down from her role. Next month on July 14. We wanted to make the announcement today nearly a month before her departure to make public aware and indicate that the process by which commission will search for a new executive director will be determined by the five of us at a future public meeting. We appreciate the notice that Karen has given us. I also appreciate my fellow commissioners collaboration as we move forward in the process. Today, briefly, I just want to thank Karen for her decade of service to the MGC. You've been an exemplary leader. And just a relatively collaborative colleague. And I know the five of us will miss you. And I know for sure your team will miss you. Missions are going to be working with you over the next month on a transition, Karen, that you'll be comfortable with and that will be comfortable with. And then we'll have that very proper public send off. That will be able to acknowledge Karen's accomplishments as gross closer to her departure date. Karen, I've been told that today is not the day that you want to make public comments. I know you want to get to work and continue working hard over the next month. And that you'll address commission, your team and the public as your day of departure grows near. Thank you. Thank you, Madam chair. Briefly, a huge thank you to the just the incredible public service that have worked at this agency over the last 10 years, that both commissioners and the team that I have worked with, the highest standards of integrity, intelligence, professionalism, just an incredible group of people to work with. So thank you to you all. All right. And we'll leave it at that commissioners for today. Does that make sense? And then we'll, we'll start working on our transition plans. And then we look forward to. Celebrating Karen, not her departure, but celebrating Karen as we near July 14th. All right. So with that, we'll turn to, I guess, a different kind of good news, Karen. And that has to do with COVID. Thank you so much. Yes, I have a trip to the end of here. Who's worked with all of us on the COVID policies. As you are aware, the governor rescinded the executive order. With respect to the vaccine mandate. And we have traditionally followed the executive branch with respect to most of our COVID policies. So Tripti has done up a memo and she can explain some of the. Specific research that she has done. Ultimately, we're just looking for some policy guidance from the commission, what you'd like to do with respect to vaccinations. And it also relates to opening back up our public meeting. So I'll. In person, I'll turn this over to Tripti. Okay. Good morning commissioners. I came to you a couple of weeks ago and had a memo and. That brought the conversation to additional questions around. Other independent agencies. And what are the, what's the data that we looked at? So. In your packet, And to address a couple of the questions that were asked at the last meeting, one was rescinding of the executive order, 595, and that went into effect May 11th and a couple of the other independent agencies that we looked into with the Comptrollers and Post Commission. We have not heard back from cannabis. The AG's office is also following the executive order. And some of the other information is that in your packet, there is some data. And that's the data that the working group looked at regarding the steps that we made for our agency when we developed our COVID policy. So those numbers are in there. The last range that we have for Suffolk County is 2.71 percent. Massachusetts is 2.26 percent in terms of testing positive. So I want to just share with you those numbers. Our casino properties are currently not requiring any vaccination. And since October of 2020, we've been well, since August of 2021, we've been following the CDC's guidelines. In terms of best practices for positive testing, quarantining, and all of those things. And so we've been continuing on with our standard policy, following the CDC guidelines if someone tests positive. And that our policies included in your packet as well. And hopefully that gives you enough information in terms of what you were looking for from our last discussion. But I'm happy to address any questions that you may have. Questions, commissioners. Thank you for the thorough and important trip to be very helpful. Any any thoughts or questions for troops or caring commissioners? All right. So your recommendation is. So I'm I'm bringing before you my findings and what the executive order is. I did not put a recommendation in this. That's for the as I mentioned that the commission to decide as we move forward to determine vaccination requirement for the MGC. So I want to provide that information. You know, my personal feeling is that it would be helpful to be consistent because we use utilize a lot of state resources such as our job postings and various other communications that come through the state, which is already stating that we are not requiring a vaccination mandate. And I want to make you aware of that and hoping that the additional information that that was provided in the packet would be helpful to help get us there in terms of consistency and consistency with us following the executive order in the past. Madam chair. Yes, if you're looking for opinions, I think with all the information that's been presented to us, you know, I'm very comfortable that we would align with the governor's rescission of this executive order. And I don't see any reason why we wouldn't rescind the mass gaming commissions, Colbert 19 policy with the information that we've received today. So that would be my opinion moving forward. Any objections are on Commissioner Skinner? I see no objections. I actually thought Commissioner Hill was going to make a motion. I was ready to second it. All right, well, then certainly no objections from Commissioner Skinner. Any other thoughts? OK, do I have a motion? Madam chair, I would move that the commission aligned with the governor's rescission of executive order number five nine five and we send the M.G.C. Colbert 19 exposure and positivity policy as discussed here today. I think. Any questions at its comments? Mr. Irvine. Hi, Mr. Hill. Hi, Mr. Skinner. Hi, Mr. Maynard. Hi, and I vote yes. Five zero. Excellent work. That's that's a good good news decision. Thank you. Thank you. Right. Thank you to be moving on to our legislative update. I've got both Commissioner Hill and, of course, Grace Robinson. Good morning. Good morning. So the main update that we're going to discuss today is just the commission's approval of the letter regarding horse racing simulcasting as we've discussed before. There are a couple letters or a couple bills before the legislature right now to extend simulcasting as we've done in the past. We are just going to be submitting a letter supporting any bill that would extend simulcasting into the future. So you all have had a chance to review that letter. And if you have any edits, I'd be happy to make them. Commissioner, is any first of any questions or comments about submitting the letter? Certainly consistent with past practice or any comments on the letter itself? Other other than excellent work, of course, Commissioner Skinner. Excellent work for sure. And thank you, Grace, for providing the other documentation I had asked for the other day really was just for my fellow commissioners. Certification, the letter that we submitted last year, as well as the legislation that we filed. I have a suggested edit to the second paragraph of the letter first sentence where it says the commission requests the legislator legislature move on any of the pending legislation. I propose we insert the word favorably after the word move. And then here, I'm sorry. Yeah, thank you. And then the second line. Mutual in paramedual, it just needs to be corrected to an EO. Yeah. Thank you. Any. Thank you. Any other edits that you might have caught? Sentiment wise, consistently what we want. This is excellent work. And once it's approved today, you'll send it off. Grace, is that the idea? Yeah, send it off right away. All right. Commissioners have a motion. I'm Madam Chair. I move that the Commission adopt and distribute the letter to the legislature related to extending live horse racing and simulcasting in the Commonwealth as included in the commissioners packet and discussed here today. Second. Any edits, comments? Mr. O'Brien. I. Commissioner. I. Mr. Skinner. I. Mr. Mane. I. And I vote yes. Five zero. All right. So we're moving on to item number six. And Commissioner O'Brien, you've taken the lead on this. Thank you for that. So, Chair, there were just a couple other items in that memo. If you wanted to review that. Apologies, you know, I thought you said it was the only thing. And I was wondering why my bigger change on that. OK, thank you. Yeah, one of those, please. Thank you so much, Grace. Very quickly. They should be very quick to update. So quickly. I just thought maybe you wanted to not mention them. My apologies. It was a misunderstanding. Um, so we had discussed resubmitting the letter regarding slottish regarding the bill for slot machines at veterans organizations.  One is very similar to what has been submitted in the past. The other is a little bit more in depth with a bit more. Technical procedures in it. So upon discussion with Commissioner Hill, we just wanted to bring it back to see if we wanted to write a new letter. If anything, and Commissioner Hill, you might have more to say on that. I think at this point, Madam Chair and fellow commissioners, that we would hold off on this particular letter as I think a lot more discussion is taking place in the Legislature. And I'd like to see actually where these bills go. We're going to probably start seeing action take place, meaning whether they get passed out of committee or if they are going to not be passed by committee, probably within the next 30 to 60 days. So I think I'd like to see where they end up before we decide what to do in regards to sending a letter at this point. Questions for Commissioner Hill agrees. But it is something we're going to watch, because if it does move, there are going to be certainly ramifications for us. If it should pass. Commissioner Hill, so this was my question. I understand we could submit a letter and we've done that in the past, but I also think we could offer our team to meet with any of the staff members that are relating if it moves, who are working on the bill because of those ramifications that really affect our operations. And that would be a good idea. You know, maybe even more effective than a letter and then follow up with the letters necessary. OK. Good point. Thanks. So you can offer that up to me, all right. And then the last two things on here, just a couple of national legislative updates, North Carolina and Vermont are both very close to signing to legalizing sports betting. Both North Carolina and Vermont have sent the bills to their respective governor's desks, and both governors have indicated that they intended to sign. So that should be coming up any day now. So let me give you a quick update. New England is now five for five when it comes to sports wagering and North Carolina is also now been signed into law. So there we have it. All of our states, good update. Thank you. Any questions for Grace or Commissioner Hill? All right. Grace, before I move, is there anything else? No, that was it. Thank you. And again, my apologies for that. All right, then I'll turn back to Commissioner O'Brien and item number five, that's six. I'm sorry. I'm a congressional officer. Yep. So I forwarded to Grace and I think she's forwarding now, if not already, the draft memo that lays out the basic overview and then the two options that we discussed at the last meeting. This is for distribution only today. Since I was the primary author, I needed to be distributed to you guys for review in this fashion. So I think Grace is sending that out. And then it'll be up for further discussion and vote in the 29th. So we're able to receive it because you are announcing it publicly. Is that correct? Yes. And then we discuss it as opposed to in real time today. Right. Right. Gives us a chance to absorb. That gives you a chance to look at it first. OK, and Grace, thank you. I just received it. So I'm assuming others are in a good spot as well. OK, thanks, Commissioner O'Brien, for that work. If I remember correctly, too, Commissioner Maynard took a quick look for you as well. He did. Commissioner Maynard looked at it. I then gave it to legal to make sure nothing in there was, you know, ill-advised or running a file of anything. So thank you. It should be good for discussion and vote in the 29th. OK, excellent. So now we're moving to item number seven, community affairs. Before we get started on the presentation, this is on process. Joe, I did send out and I'm sorry, Chancellor Grossman, if I missed your response this morning, I did. And I say this in advance. I wondered about voting on the recommendations should. As we are going through the memorandum, are we able to do move in sort of a single motion on the entire and then recommendations, including any denials or partial fundings and then accept out or must we do each individual? I only asked that. The motions are excellent, but I just wanted to check in on efficiencies. From my perspective, the key, of course, is making sure that the commission's position on each application is clear. And whether that's done, I think we've done it a number of different ways over the years. So it's really a matter of preference. Carrie, Teresie updated the motions this morning. So you have a couple of different options before you. As a matter of law, I don't have a real, you know, you know, opinion as to what the better approach is, either as fine, as long as we're clear as to whether applications are being granted or denied or in part or in whole. But otherwise, it's just a matter of efficiency. Great. And I'm not sure if everybody saw Carrie's email because I actually scanned all my emails, but I might have missed Carrie. So thank you, Carrie. And first off, thank you for all the work that you do to prepare us on with respect to draft motions. So just a thought as we're going through commissioners Joe's presentation in Lillian, Mary's presentation. Thanks. Chief Lee. Thank you, Madam Chair and commissioners. So today we are hoping is our final day of Community Mitigation Fund applications. Today, we'll be looking at the public safety applications and we will need to revisit the one application on the project of regional significance. So we'll do public safety first. But so, you know, of course, Mary and Lily are with me today, but we also have Zach Mercer is joining us. Zach helped us out a lot on these public safety applications. So he's joining us today as well. Good morning. So I guess I will jump right in. We do have quite a bit of ground to cover today. So the first application that we have is the City of Boston Police Department. So they are asking for some additional funding for their human trafficking units, some overtime funding, but also including an undercover vehicle, some funding for their youth violence strike force, their drug control unit and for some additional traffic patrols, primarily in the Charlestown area. So, you know, the review team does agree with respect to the human trafficking piece of it, the review team does agree that they have submitted sufficient evidence to us in that area to constitute an impact of the casino that the human trafficking unit in Boston has worked with the City of Everett Police Department and the state police on several investigations in the area. So we do agree that we should fund the overtime. However, we are not recommending the funding of an additional undercover vehicle. So last year, the City of Boston requested two undercover vehicles from the Community Mitigation Fund. And we agreed that funding one of those was our fair share of that effort. So nothing that was submitted with this application indicated to us that there is additional need for this vehicle or that our fair share wasn't just the one vehicle that we provided last year, so we're not recommending that piece of it. With respect to the request for the youth violence strike force and the drug control unit, essentially, we had difficulty finding the nexus to the casino on this one. Some anecdotal information was submitted. But, you know, the City of Boston hasn't entered into any agreements with the Everett Police Department or hasn't been requested by Everett PD to help out on anything that's been associated with the casino. The city indicated that they want to develop those relationships. And I think, you know, should they do that? And some evidence is presented that shows that there is a nexus to the casino. We could perhaps get to that in the future funding round. But as of this year, we did not see that particular nexus to the casino on the youth violence strike force and the drug control unit. We, of course, do agree that increases in traffic associated with Angkor have a direct impact on Sullivan Square and Rutherford Ave. as about 70 percent of the casino traffic passes through Sullivan Square. So we are recommending the increased traffic patrols that they have proposed during high traffic weekends, evenings and things of that nature that should help improve traffic safety and help control speeds and so on through that area. So we are recommending partial funding of the grant in the amount of $65,000 for the human trafficking unit over time and for the overtime funding for the additional traffic patrols. So does any questions from the Commission on that? OK, none appearing. The next request is from the Everett Fire Department. They are looking for fifty three thousand and thirty nine dollars for the purchase of an inspectional vehicle. So the Everett Fire Department needs to do a lot of inspections at various locations, you know, in residential houses. They do, you know, the smoke detector inspections when they're when a house is being sold, but in commercial spaces, you know, when there's building going on, there are permits that are necessary and there are various and sundry inspections that they need to do. So these inspections at Angkor total about one hundred and fifty per year and this the fire prevention division performs about two thousand inspections per year, which does, you know, certainly show an increase. And we do agree that that is that is an impact of the casino. But the issue that we have here is in our guidelines, we say that all applications must demonstrate that CMF funds will supplement and not supplant historic historical operations funded. So in this case, you know, the city of Everett indicated to us that if we purchased this new vehicle, it wasn't that they needed to expand their fleet and add a new inspector or do anything of that nature. But this would simply replace their oldest vehicle in the fleet.  So for that reason, we are not recommending funding for this grant. Any questions on that one? OK, the next one is another request from the Everett Fire Department for some training. They're asking for forty five thousand dollars to pursue training on hazards associated with Encore Boston Harbor. So Encore certainly introduced to the city of Everett challenges for for a fire department that they didn't really have before. With the hotel being a high rise building, you know, firefighting and high rises is a whole different method than than sort of, you know, you would on maybe a house fire or something that's a single story or a building and also large underground parking garage that has numerous car charging stations and so on.  So, you know, we certainly agree that that that Encore has that there is an impact of Encore and that, you know, having the fire department appropriately trained to fight fires in a building of this nature is certainly problematic, so we are recommending full funding for that. Any questions on that one? No. OK, so the next one, the Everett Police Department was requesting two electric vehicles and this was originally filed under the specific impact category as it is for a public safety agency. We moved it to the public safety category. So Everett Police Department currently parks two police vehicles at Encore, Boston Harbor for for the use by their officers when they are patrolling the area. And again, this is similar to the fire department request when asked what what would you know, what would these vehicles be used for? And they're essentially to replace the two old vehicles that were there. So, again, this comes down to that supplementing and not supplanting funding. You know, the the city of Everett chose to park those vehicles down there out of a matter of convenience. There wasn't a particular requirement to add vehicles down to the to the to the location. It's just it's just convenient for their officers. So, again, we're not recommending this because of that issue about, you know, supplanting historical operations funding. This is not, you know, sort of adding something new to the to their program. Questions on that one? Questions. OK, so the Everett Police Department was requesting one hundred and forty five thousand and six dollars for water safety enhancements along the Mystic River and additional patrols in and around the Encore property. They modified this request to eliminate the water safety enhancements, which lowers their request down to one hundred and four thousand one hundred dollars for the additional police patrols. So these police patrols, we've been funding for the last few years. And these are for late night patrols in in the on the busy weekends and busy times down at the casino. You know, the the rationale behind these was that the extension of alcohol service to four a.m. sort of extended the peak departure time periods from the casino and and we've always agreed that that was an impact associated with the casino. We did ask them for some additional information this year around sort of the results of these patrols that they did show, you know, quite a number of traffic stops and things of that nature. So, you know, we do agree that continuing these patrols is appropriate and we're recommending full funding of the hundred and four thousand one hundred for those additional police patrols. Questions on that one. That commissioners. OK, OK, no, I'm listening, but I'm just having some audio issues. So I'm going to be correcting. OK, thank you. The next request is from Everett police as well. So last year as in a grant, we purchased a Konex container for down across the street from Encore for the police department to use to store equipment and some portable lighting that they have. And it's also outfitted with an office. So a police officer can do some paperwork in there while they're down in the vicinity of the casino. And this is asking for some additional equipment to outfit that, looking for an interoperable radio system so that they can appropriately talk to the folks in the G.E.U. as well as Everett PD and also some security cameras and some police graphics to identify it as a police property. So we agree that this this funding makes sense. You know, the the additional of the trailer down there helps the police department be more efficient when they're doing you know, crossings of Broadway and working details on. So we agree that that made sense on that. Any questions on that one? OK, none appearing. The next one is the town of Foxborough Police Department. They were requesting one hundred forty three thousand four hundred dollars for some officer training for the purchase of a motorcycle and some equipment, a drone and some mapping equipment for their the crash unit, crash investigation unit. So starting with the traffic unit requests, we have provided some fairly significant funding to Foxborough in the last couple of years related to traffic related items. And similar to the other ones that you've heard, the motorcycle that they are requesting is to replace an old motorcycle. So we get to that supplementing versus supplanting. But I think more more than that is that in looking at this, there really isn't a tremendous amount of traffic that goes up into Foxborough from associated with the casino. In the memo, we did a bit of an analysis in this. In the end, what we're seeing is that about point six percent of the traffic on route one comes from the casino. So not a tremendous amount of traffic. You know, that that road handles thirty one thousand vehicles a day. So it's it's a very small contribution to that. So so we are not recommending funding that portion of the grant that's associated with the overtime for the traffic unit and the and the motorcycle and the funding of the drone. So now we do we do agree that the casino patrons do utilize the hotels in Foxborough. And and by extension, they may contribute to some of the issues that are experienced in Foxborough. So we are recommending the overtime funding to help continue to the enforcement initiatives that they have at the area hotels. And Foxborough was also identified a number of areas that they would like for continued training, and we agree that we should fund these trainings. The application didn't actually say, you know, they wanted to send, you know, six officers to this training and eight officers to that training. They put kind of a range of types of training. And we agree that all of those types are appropriate. But we are recommending that the town provide staff with a detailed proposal of the final training for our review and approval. Just to ensure that it's being the money is being spent appropriately. So we're recommending partial funding of the grant in the amount of sixty one thousand four hundred for the police training costs and for the hotel calls for service. Any questions on that? None? OK. Moving on to the next one is Hamden. They're asking for fifteen thousand three hundred dollars to install a couple of pole mounted radar units and to do some additional patrols in the area to curb speeding. You know, in our analysis on this one, you know, there was no analysis done as part of the development of of MGM that indicated how much traffic was coming into Hamden. But we do agree that about five and a half percent of the casino related traffic was expected to travel from Springfield into East Long Meadow. And while, you know, vehicles going into East Long Meadow have several different ways to go, you know, one of the major routes through East Long Meadow will take you into Hamden. So we do agree that there is some traffic impact on Hamden, but it's probably pretty minor. But one of the things that we have done consistently with communities is the the the radar speed boards, you know, those have been shown to reduce traffic speeds and and and would by extension improve safety. So we agree that that those are appropriate. And the additional patrols are really for just some of the busier weekends. And it's, you know, a pretty modest sum of money. So we agree that that was appropriate and are recommending funding of that grant for the 15,300. Any questions on that one? No. OK, the next one is the town of Long Meadow. The police department, they are requesting some cameras and some speed alert boards for one of the major roads that leads out to Route five, which is Converse Street and also on part of Route five. Last year, we gave them a grant for a couple of cameras at one particular location, and that's been very successful. So they are looking to try to increase that. They have shown in their the look back studies that have been done, the traffic studies that have been done and have showed some increases and crashes in these locations since the opening of the casino. They've also submitted some data that demonstrated increases in property crimes and also referenced one of our Christopher Bruce studies that corroborate some of these observations. So we agree that there is some impact associated with the casino on Route five and by extension for Converse Street. Again, the speed rate, our message signs are appropriate and these also give them good data to use that they can monitor traffic in the area. So that will help them respond to any incidences that happen in those locations. So we are recommending full funding of that grant in the amount of $192,400. Questions on that one? So OK. The next one is Ludlow, their police department. They had requested $197,000 for training, a police vehicle and various equipment for their police department. One of the issues that we had with this application is that the town did not really identify a direct impact of the casino for this. So that made our job a little difficult to try to justify whether or not to fund these items. So in the end, we are just proposing to fund the training that they had proposed, which is implicit bias training and de-escalation training, which is something that we've consistently done across communities, the host and surrounding communities. And we've done that almost in the absence of demonstrating a direct impact. It sort of implied that police departments will come into contact with patrons and employees of the casinos in their regular duties. So we've always agreed that the training is appropriate. But, you know, and the town has identified a lot of great programs that they have and that they do. And again, the problem that we had was that we just couldn't make those connections to those programs to any kind of an impact from the casino. So because of that, we are not recommending funding of any of the other items that were requested, the truck and any of the other equipment that they were requested. So we are recommending partial funding of the grant in the amount of $31,800, which is for the implicit bias and de-escalation training and the associated with that train. Questions on that one? I just have a comment and thank you for your explanation on why it's partial, Joe. I just want to commend the applicants who are emphasizing training. We looked at that about a couple of years ago and recognized that that was really a way that the community mitigation grants can make an impact. And I especially appreciate the training of the anti-biased and the de-escalation. So thank you for this and just really good to see that municipalities are taking advantage of this. Chief Delaney and I know in law it has to do with the outreach that you and your division do to encourage the grant application. So thank you. Okay, so on the next one is Maldon. Maldon was requesting two police electric vehicles and a speed alert board. And you're starting to hear a theme here, but again, we ran into the supplementing versus supplanting of equipment. And again, in this case, when the community was asked, it was essentially that they'd retire to all this vehicles and add two new vehicles onto it, which is not really what the intent of our program is. We do agree that Maldon has seen an increase in traffic associated with the casino. It's any of the traffic that goes north tends to come up into Maldon and Medford and some of those other communities. But, so we agree that the speed board is appropriate to help try to slow down traffic and be able to monitor traffic, but we are not recommending the vehicles due to the supplanting historical operations funding. So we're recommending partial funding of the amount of 17,900 for the purchase of the radar message board. Questions on that? Okay, so the next one is Medford, which is a very similar application to the previous one. The city of Medford is requesting 194,300 for the purchase of a hybrid police vehicle. And they will look for 11 dynamic speed feedback signs and two message display signs. And, you know, similar to the others, we were saying that with the vehicle we're not recommending that as it's not supplementing, but supplanting.  It's quite a number of them here, but they gave us a map that showed all the major routes to the casinos and where they wanted the boards and it seemed appropriate. And again, having these boards tied in, they can really monitor traffic well and help decide where they should be doing patrols and things of that nature. So we are recommending partial funding of the grant and the amount of $130,000 for the purchase of the radar message signs and displays. Any questions on that? Okay, so the next one is the town of Melrose, a city of Melrose, excuse me, they're requesting $893,500 for a new communication system for their police and fire departments. This would essentially fund the entire replacement of their police, their communication system. So, you know, in looking at this, you know, we know that Melrose has a mutual aid agreement with Everett and they have responded to them several times. We know that in one case, they actually responded to Encore with their canine unit at the city of Everett's request. But, you know, when we go right down to the basic guidelines, we talk about, you know, the intent of the community mitigation funds to offset the costs associated with the construction and operation casinos. And again, this is the supplementing and not supplanting issue. You know, it's the responsibility of the city of Melrose to provide their police and fire departments with appropriate communication systems. You know, they would need to have an appropriate communication system whether or not Encore of Boston Harbor was there.  You know, we looked at even saying that this would have required a waiver from the $200,000 category cap. And even looking at, we tried to look at $200,000 saying it doesn't make sense for that. And we simply couldn't find that nexus that would justify that expense. So, you know, we are not recommending funding of this application. Questions on that one? I'll set. Okay, so the next one is Plainville. Plainville was requesting funding for a community resource officer. This is essentially the same application that they submitted last year that we did not approve. And again, this comes down to trying to make that nexus to the casino. You know, the casino has its gaming enforcement unit, which is responsible for, you know, for policing the casino. And they certainly do need to interact with the Plainville, excuse me, Plainville Police Department. But, you know, the application was saying that really that this would help improve communications or would help, you know, facilitate certain things that go on there. And, but we never really identified what the issues were there. I mean, that there didn't seem to be any instances that they could point to where this community resource officer would have prevented something happening. So essentially, we couldn't really make that nexus to the casino. They identified a lot of other things that this resource officer could do. And, you know, but those were not associated with the casino. So again, look, we think that, you know, I'm sure that the Plainville Police Department could use additional staff and that a community resource officer would be valuable for the community, but we just didn't see the connection to the casino. So we are not recommending that application. Questions on that? Okay, so the next one is another Plainville application for their police department. This is the force science certification. They're asking for $123,750 for force analyst certification training for 75 officers. And I think all of the commissioners had an opportunity to go down to Plainville, or at least I think most of you did. And I think you saw firsthand the training that they do on use of force training and how valuable that training is.  And so Plainville is also offering this training, not only to Plainville officers, but also the gaming enforcement unit members. And they will be offering any of the remaining seats to the communities that border Plainville. So we really like the sort of regionality of this application as well. So we are recommending full funding of the grants in the amount of $12750. Thank you, Thomas. It's an excellent application. And I'm sure commissioners, you all agree in terms of its regionalization too. So thank you. So the next, another Plainville application, this is from their fire department. They are requesting $13,200 to purchase four electric vehicle fire blankets. So, you know, the impact here, there are a significant number of charging stations at the Plainville Park, Sino, and also it's in parking garages, any kind of time that the fire might occur in the location like that. A, it makes it more difficult to fight the fire in the first place, but if it's an electrical fire, it's even more difficult to fight those fires. So, you know, given that number of charging stations and the increased prevalence of electric and hybrid vehicles in general, we feel that these blankets would, you know, the little assist the fire department in fighting any electrical vehicle fire, but would it be especially helpful if one were to occur at PPC? So we are recommending the full funding in the amount of $13,200. Any questions on that one? Okay, so the next one is Revere. They are requesting $64,000 for the lease of eight license plate recognition cameras. They're known as flock cameras. So they would lease those for a period of 36 months and would place those on the major routes to and from the casino. You know, they submitted quite a bit of information to us regarding some human trafficking, money laundering, other, you know, drug crimes and other things of that nature that are happening in Revere, and some of which can be traced either directly or indirectly to Encore or to patrons going to Encore, I should say, not to the casino itself. But, and they, their application, they really made a compelling case for the effectiveness of these. And initially we were a little, you know, a little questionable, but they gave us really a lot of good data that showed what these can do and how they can help the police department in apprehending suspects and so on. So we are recommending full funding of the project of this project in the amount of $64,000. Questions on that one? No, my only comment is I did speak with Commissioner O'Brien about this. There's an opportunity for your subcommittee on public safety, because there's an intersectionality with the human trafficking and money laundering. Should I know you're working with other agencies, Commissioner O'Brien, but this is a revealing application sort of our follow-up, Chief Delaney. So thank you. Okay, so the next one is City of Springfield, what they're calling their Safe Ride Home Project. They're requesting $200,000 to increase public awareness and educate professionals inside and outside the casino and developing a digital ad campaign to help fight OUIs. So the impact that was identified comes right from the Christopher Bruce study, the assessment of casinos impacts on operating under the influence. And that did identify, you know, an increase in OUIs associated with casinos. So we certainly do agree that any efforts to help reduce these events is an appropriate use of CMF funds. And Springfield is proposing to partner with the Massachusetts Council on gaming and health to work with them, developing a media campaign and so on. So this application was a little bit different for us. It came in under public safety, but it seems it has some aspects of public safety. It has some aspects of gambling, harm reduction. It has some aspects of research. So it's something that we haven't seen quite like this before. And we did ask for quite a bit of additional information and on this application to better understand how it was supposed to work. And while we are recommending full funding, or not full funding, excuse me, we are recommending partial funding of this grant with a couple of conditions. One is we want to kind of have a touch point with the city in the middle of this process to make sure that this thing is advancing the way that we expect it to. So we're recommending sort of releasing the first portion of their funding. And then after that meeting, and if everything is going according to plan, we can release the remainder of the funding. The one piece of it that we are not recommending is there were some stipends for overtime funding for police officers and other staff that would be attending the trainings. And these would not just be Springfield employees, these would be folks from other cities and towns surrounding Springfield. And it just didn't seem appropriate to the committee that we should be funding that piece of it. So the total amount that we're recommending is the $191,200 with the stipulation that will release that money in the sort of the two tronches. Questions on that? No, okay. The next one is Springfield Police Department. They are requesting some equipment upgrades and training and requesting a total of $224,900. So they are asking for some overtime funding for a few different things. One is for human trafficking, for anti-John deployments. Also some overtime to do some homeless outreach deployments as well as funding for overtime for traffic deployments associated with the MGM parking garage. They are also requesting two police cruisers for the gaming enforcement unit, some sexual assault training, steel barricades for pedestrian and vehicular control, a drone for the Metro division and tactical shotguns. So I think when looking at the overtime request, some of these events, particularly associated with the parking garage that the city identified are not directly associated with MGM. They're associated with the Mass Mutual Center. And while we do understand that folks going to the Mass Mutual Center will park at the MGM garage, it wasn't clear that community mitigation funds should be funding all of that. And so we looked at a bunch of different things and sort of the nexus to the casino on homelessness and prostitution. And we weren't convinced that, again, that the CMS should be funding all of this amount. So we are recommending funding $50,000 of the $84,000 request and we'll leave it up to the city to decide in which sort of which buckets they want that money to go. We didn't wanna try to really micromanage this thing but we did feel that the request was maybe a little on the high side. So with respect to the other items, the sexual assault training, we felt strongly that that should be funded. With regard to the two police cruisers for the gaming enforcement unit. So when the gaming enforcement unit was put together, there were no vehicles assigned to it. And the city of Springfield had parked a couple of vehicles over there so that they could use them, couple of their older vehicles so they could use those. We did realize a couple of years ago, Everett put in a similar request that they certainly do need some vehicles for use during the day. And in the case of Everett, we supplied one vehicle to the gaming enforcement unit and we are proposing to do the same here just to be consistent with what we've done previously. So then the other items, the steel barricades, those seem to be appropriate to help with crowd control and when events are letting out and things of that nature, kind of keeping folks on the sidewalks and not strolling out in streets. And also the drone, drones are coming into bigger use by local communities and with all of the outdoor events that MGM has with their concerts outside and things of that nature. And then when events are letting out, the drone is probably pretty valuable to help Springfield in controlling traffic and crowds and things of that nature. So we are recommending funding that and that we'll be going to the Metro division, which is the area that's right around the casino. So we felt that that was appropriate. So in the end, we're recommending partial funding. Oh, and then on the last one was on the shotguns. We are not recommending funding that. I felt that that was a responsibility of the city to equip their officers appropriately. And if that's something that they feel that they need that that should be on the city to provide action. So in the end, we're recommending $135,200 for the overtime costs for the one marked police cruiser for the sexual assault training, the steel barricades and the drone and associated training along that goes with the drone. So that's a lot. Any questions on that one? I'll set them. Okay. Springfield fire department is asking for $19,800 for defibrillators that respond to the casino area. The issue that they have primarily is compatibility of theirs with the ambulance provider that they have and are looking to be consistent so that everybody's working on the same type of equipment. We certainly, there certainly are increased calls to that area associated with the casino. And so we are certainly recommending the funding of the defibrillators for the fire department. Okay, West Springfield is the next one. Any questions on that one? I'll set it. West Springfield. Emergency responders. So this application, they're requesting $200,000 for additional police fire and EMS. And you might notice in the write up in the memo, it's essentially the same write up that we had from last year. This is a request that we've funded for the last few years. And it was based on the one year look back study that was done for West Springfield that did identify some increased public safety costs over and above the amount of money that they get as part of their surrounding community agreement. So essentially, this has shown that there's an impact and they quantified that impact and therefore we're recommending that that be funded. So this year is year five of the casino. And so they were required to do a one year look back study and a five year look back study. So if the talent comes in for an application, again, next year will need to be based on that five year look back study. And if it still identifies an impact, I guess we'll deal with it. Then if that impact has gone away, then maybe this goes away as well, but we'll have to just wait and see what happens. But based on that one year look back study, which is the best data that we have, we are recommending funding of the grant for $200,000. Questions on that? Okay. The next one is Wilburham. They are looking for some upgrades to their radio software. Essentially, this is their mobile radios. They have 10 police radios, five fire vehicle radios, and one other portable radio. They right now are not working on the same system that Springfield is and doesn't have sort of interoperability with them. This would give them that capability. Wilburham is a surrounding community. It has a mutual aid agreement with Springfield and other surrounding communities. And I think the other factor that we wanna consider here is that Wilburham was the only community that didn't use its original $100,000 reserve. And this project certainly would have been eligible under that $100,000 reserve. But with them being a surrounding community and having a mutual aid agreements, this seems perfectly appropriate. So we're recommending full funding in the amount of $42,800. Questions on that? Okay. And so our last public safety application. So Rentham is requesting $156,700 for a pickup truck, a motorcycle, and two radar message signs to traffic concerns. And so we're recommending, again, like we have for many of these other communities, the radar message signs. But I think similar, this is very similar to the Foxboro analysis that we did earlier that there really is not a whole lot of traffic that's going up into Rentham, even though Rentham directly abuts Plainville, the traffic that would go up to Rentham would be going up Route 1. And again, we estimated that there's about 6 tenths of a percent of the traffic on Route 1 is associated with the casino. So we are not, we also, we asked them for additional documentation on the casino related impact, but we did not get a response back from the town. So absent that, we can't really, and based on our analysis, there really isn't much of an impact and absent any additional information from the town, we really can't recommend, the pickup truck and the motorcycle for that work. But again, the speed boards, we do know that those will help. And we do realize that there is some traffic that goes up into Rentham. It's just, it's a modest impact. And we felt that the review team felt that the speed alert signs were sort of appropriate for some traffic mitigation. And that's, so we're recommending $44,900 for the purchase of those. And that concludes the public safety portion of this. And chair, I don't know if you want to do motions on the public safety first, and then we'll go back and talk about Springfield, or if you want to do that first, I'll leave that up to you. It can make sense to move on the items you just presented. If the commissioners have questions, they can ask them now, and then we'll turn to Springfield. Okay. Commissioners questions, I know that we have the benefit of very, very close to by dues and the work of Joe Galanian and his team. Thank you to both Millie Wallace and Mary Thuramon. So in terms of motion or motions? I would be very comfortable making one motion for those that we are going to fund first. Thank you. That said, madam chair, I move that the commission approve applications from the following applicants for funding from the community mitigation fund for the purposes described in the submitted applications and materials included in the commissioners packet, and for the reasons described therein and discussed here today. And further, that commission staff be authorized to execute a grant instrument commemorating these awards in accordance with 205 CMR 153.04 to the city of Everett $45,000 funding for training for high rise and below gray firefighting, crowd management and lithium battery fire. City of Everett 18,700 funding to outfit connect storage unit with video surveillance, interoperable radio system, Everett police paint and graphics to the city of Revere $64,000 funding for the lease of eight solar powered Falcon license plate recognition cameras for 36 months to the town of Hamden 15,300 funding for special four-hour traffic enforcement shifts and the purchase of two pole radar units and a cruiser handheld radar unit to the town of Long Meadow 192,400 funding for the purchase of cameras and speed alert radar message signs, installation of a side street camera detection system and 1.8 miles of additional fiber optic cable to the city of Springfield 19,800 funding to purchase seven defibrillator units, city of West Springfield $200,000 additional funding for police fire and EMS to town of Wilburham 42,800 funding to purchase 10 police vehicle radios and five fire vehicle radios and to upgrade one police portable radio to the town of Plainville 123,750 funding for force science certification for law enforcement and to the town of Plainville, excuse me, 13,200 funding for purchase of four electric vehicle fire blankets. So I'll second, but I do have one friendly amendment going back to the opening like we could say grant instruments plural rather than a grant instrument because I think they're going to be individualized to the municipalities. I would accept that friendly amendment. Any other comments? So we have a second with that amendment. Commissioner Bryant. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. I vote yes, five, zero. Commissioner Hill. First off, I'm going to thank you for your work that you've done as part of the committee, Commissioner Hill. You want to move further. I think I would keel over if I did. So if somebody else would like to take over the next one. I was waiting to see if you were going to try and it was going to be very impressed. You don't want to listen to that. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to Skinner, were you turning off your audio? I had it off, but. No, Brian jumped in. So either way, I'll yield to Commissioner Bryant. I can do the partials if someone else wants to do the denials. Thank you, Commissioner Skinner. Sure. Yeah, I move that the Commission approve and part applications from the following applicants for funding from the Community Mitigation Fund for the purposes described in the submitted application and the materials included in the commissioners packet. And for the reasons described therein and discussed here today. And subject to any of the conditions outlined in the Miranda and the commissioners packet. And further that commission staff be authorized to execute grant instruments commemorating these awards in accordance with 205 CMR 153.04. Namely, the city of Boston, $65,000 funding for the city's human trafficking unit including an undercover vehicle, youth violence strike force, drug control unit and additional traffic controls for the city of Everett, $104,000 funding for water safety enhancements along the Mystic River and additional patrols around Encore, Boston Harbor. City of Maldon, $17,900 funding to purchase electric vehicles and traffic safety message trailer. City of Medford, $130,000 funding to purchase a hybrid police safety vehicle speed alert radar message signs and message display signs. For the town of Ludlow, $31,800 funding for implicit bias and de-escalation training as well as public safety equipment and tools as for the city of Springfield, $135,200 for funding for police personnel equipment and training also for the city of Springfield, $191,200 funding for a full-time community health worker. For the town of Foxborough, $61,400 funding for officer training investigation and traffic safety items. And lastly, for the town of Rentham, $44,900 funding for vehicles and message signs. Thank you. Any comments? Okay, thank you, Commissioner Skinner. Cushow, Brian. Hi. Mr. Hill. Hi. Mr. Skinner. Hi. Mr. Maynard. Hi. And I thought, yes, 5-0, thank you. And Commissioner Skinner, if you're, if you are prepared, no. Okay. Do I? Sure. I'm prepared. I'll try. And if you need assistance, somebody will jump in. Okay. I move that the commission denied the applications from the following applicants for funding from the community mitigation fund for the reasons described in the memorandum in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. The city of Everett, funding for purchase of inspectional vehicle, the city of Everett, funding for purchase of electric vehicles, the city of Melrose, funding for new communication system, the town of Plainville, funding for community resource officers. Second. Second. Great. Thank you, Commissioner O'Brien. Thanks, Commissioner Maynard. All right. Any comments needed here? All right. Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Mr. Skinner. Hi. Commissioner Maynard. Hi. I vote yes. Five-zero. Excellent work. Thank you, Joe, William and Mary. Now we do have an outstanding item. Joe. I guess, how do you want to proceed with this one? I mean, this is for the project of regional significance for the proposed parking garage in Springfield. The review team did not recommend funding for the project and primarily because the review team didn't consider it to be regionally significant. And as well as the fact that we were only going to be recommending one project of regional significance and we felt that the other project that Pioneer Valley was doing was a better project than this one. So we were not recommending funding for the project. But we didn't move on it before because I know I raised, I raised a counter argument that I did see it as perhaps certainly regionally important. And I think I asked about whether there was consideration that there could only be one award. And I think that that might, I don't want to put words in the committee's mouth, but that perhaps if there was a comparison, perhaps one was more, had a greater impact regionally than the other. And so if we only did one, your recommendation was the other. But I do understand that from my follow-up conversation, again, thank you to you and your team that we could have a waiver that would allow us to fund both. I do feel that the proposal from Springfield is a following. It follows up with earlier community mitigation funding and perhaps you can elaborate on that, Joe. So it's a continuation of the work that we've been supporting to continue the revitalization of that area. We understand Springfield is one location of our resort destination casino and that it has, of course, a core impact on the region in that this garage is the proposal has been perceived by the Springfield area as critical in that continuum revitalization. I do know since then, we've received at least one letter of support from the mayor. I believe, Grace, that's been shared publicly. I wanna thank Mayor Sarno for submitting that letter. I believe it was distributed in hard copy most recently to all of us, but certainly earlier it went to all of us electronically. Mayor, Commissioner Maynard, I think you might have received at least one comment since then from another invested constituent. I don't know if we've received other comments, but what I do know is that folks are listening to your community mitigation program. And that I appreciate very, very much because they did weigh in based on our earlier discussion. That's kind of my quick recap of what I'm remembering. Mr. Chairman, because I know that there was a discussion among us all. Commissioner Maynard. Oh, I just wanna give this quick update. Madam Chair, I'm actually, I hate to do this and I'm not trying to, not to ice the kicker, but I actually need five minutes. I'm having an internet difficulty and so it's hard for me to follow this. And I think this is a very important conversation. Can we have a five minute break? Sure, sure. And he had just let me know that. So to make sure that Commissioner Maynard is all on board, perhaps I don't know if you can shift to your phone hotspot or whatever, but we'll let you take the five minutes and then Commissioner Hill, can I turn to you next after we get Commissioner Maynard sorted out? Well, Chair, before we break for the five minutes, I hate to do this. I'm not prepared to have this discussion today. I was not aware that it had been marked up for our discussion. So I'm gonna ask that we hold until either after a lunch break if we get there or until the next meeting. Yeah, and Madam Chair and Commissioners, if I could jump in, I don't see this on the agenda anywhere and I don't see any materials in the packet relative to this issue. Well, I think the materials were in the previous packet when we initially discussed it. I think that Council Grossman, it's a fair point. I think the way it was framed was that it would be the final piece of our discussion after this. When we spoke last about this, that we would circle back. Certainly to do it again, I'm happy to do that. We wanna keep track of this important discussion. So it means, Joe, that you won't be closing out community mitigation if we roll it out further. So my apologies. We can certainly do that. Grace, that would mean we'd be turning to it on June 29th. 29th. Yeah, I won't be available on the 29th. Okay. So we have marked up, we have our review of our category two application planned for the 20th, for the roll over to the 21st. We have an agenda-setting meeting. If I'm sure our applicant would tolerate if we, after our agenda-setting meeting on the 21st, which I'm hoping we can start at, are we unable to start at nine? Oh, we can, Grace. We could then do a very quick single item on this important issue per Springfield on the 21st, and then move into any rollover of our category two application review. How's that sound, commissioners, and Chief Delaney? Yeah, that's fine by me. Any objection to that? Okay, then we'll roll it over to the 21st. And that actually, for those who are listening, any further support or concerns or questions regarding this, it is what I would want. And I think, commissioners, we did have a discussion on this. And I don't think any of us we supported the other regionalization application. So it is not to reverse that discussion. It would be require, as I understand it, some action waiver or whatever about doing a second funding of this particular type of grant. Is that fair job? Yeah, I think it's, it would require a waiver in, I mean, our guidelines say that we plan on doing one. So that would be a waiver from our guidelines. Right, and but if I recall correctly, you did say that we've done something like that in the past. Well, I mean, the commission can waive any particular requirement in the regulations, in the guidelines that they want. That's the way we've stipulated it throughout. Okay, thank you. We'll have to update Commissioner Maynard on this discussion if he wasn't able to hear it. So, but what I'm understanding is, does that help everybody in terms of framing it out? And if we could get, oh, Commissioner Skinner. Yes, it does help for the future discussion, but also if we could have any public comment circulated among the five of us, that would be good. I think the only one that we've received today is the one that was circulated that I know of, if there are any others, yes, they should be circulated to us or in our SharePoint. It's always good to give it an email to us when I certainly have that practice through Grace, if you receive anything, I think Commissioner Maynard may have gotten a phone call. So I was going to- Okay, that's the comment I was referring to. Yeah, I think it was a phone call, but I think he asked the individual to record it in a comment, but it came yesterday late. So that was the issue, Commissioner Skinner. All right, all right. So I'm going to pause for, let me turn like at 1040, a good chance for us to get a quick break in and figure out Commissioner Maynard's internet issues. And Madam Chair, just before you break, I just did want to, I was kind of planning on wrapping up today, but I don't have one more item, but I just did want to extend my thanks to the review team and the work that they did. Of course, Mary Thurlow and Lily Wallace are instrumental to this point. We have a bunch of new folks on our team this year. Well, Gary, Theresa's been on our team for a few years and she always helped us out with our legal things. And Judy Young has joined our team this year and she's been great. And Bonnie Andrews has helped us out with the problem gambling applications that we've gotten. And again, she's been a breath of fresh air on our team. And of course, we have a Zach Mercer with us today from IEB who has been really a great help. He jumped in with both feet and really helped us sort through some of these sort of stickier issues that we sometimes run into. So great thanks to him. And of course, thanks to Brad Hill, Commissioner Hill who's sat through all of these meetings with us and seen some of the sausage making that goes on. So again, many thanks to him. And I think we put together a really great team this year. Last year we had some absences that we weren't quite able to fill and had to operate a little bit by the seat of our pants at times. But this year we have a nice team together hoping we can keep it together for the future as it's been really great. I really wanna extend my thanks to everybody who's helped out on this. And I think we all join you. Thank you, Joe. So thank you so much. And just to attorney Mercer, thank you. This is your first year and I know everybody really appreciates your insights from your public safety and your background. So thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Chair, it's been a privilege. That's excellent. I know that people really, it's additional work but Joe, you've explained that it's different work and it's a great way to really understand the cross-accompanimental implications here. So thank you. All right, we're gonna break for 10 minutes and we'll return at 10.40. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, part of it covered. I just wanna give Commissioner Maynard a chance because it's internet isn't working perfectly. So at times he may video off but I just, we didn't give you the chance to answer earlier because you were having trouble. So I just thought I would let you weigh in now. Do we need to take roll before I do that? Oh, thank you. Yeah, Commissioner O'Brien. I'm here. Commissioner Hill. I'm here. Commissioner Skinner. I'm here. Commissioner Maynard. I'm here. Yeah, thank you. And thanks for that reminder, Commissioner Maynard. So as the chair was speaking about, I got a call from a former colleague and a resident of Springfield who did express support for the project we were talking about earlier. I know that we are marking up any discussion for that but I know this came up and I wanted to clarify. I have asked that resident if he's comfortable to produce that in writing and to all the commissioners but I did get a call and that's all it was. It was a phone call saying, saw this was up and I wanted to let you know that the I support it, so. Thanks. And so there's time now to be reduced to writing that would be great and any others. And of course, I'll be distributed to all commissioners in advance. Okay, so thank you, Commissioner Maynard and sorry about your internet challenges. We'll go on now to item number eight and I'll turn to director Van, but it is quite nice also to see Crystal Bushman who will be joining today. So thank you. Yes, Madam Chair, commissioners. We have before you today requests for temporary waivers to certain provisions of 205, CMR 247 and 248. And our business manager, Crystal Beach will take her away. Good morning. So as director Bann said, I'm presenting several temporary waiver requests from the sports way during regulations 205, CMR 247 and 248. These were approved during the June 1st public meeting and then went into effect by emergency. The minute details are actually outlined in the memo, which is if there's traffic noise and the waiver requests were included in your packet, but I'll offer a brief overview if that's how you want to proceed, Chair. Sure. So we are looking at waiver requests for five specific regulations at this time. The first two are related to 205, CMR 24709, which are promotional offers, in particular 24709-4. We received several waiver requests and after review and discussions, our team is recommending an industry-wide uniform waiver from the requirements through August 1st, 2023. We feel that that would ensure fairness across the industry and the Commonwealth to both operators and patrons. In addition, under 24709-3, DraftKings requested a waiver through August 31st of 2023 to allow for technological development, testing and deployment related to the regulation, which we would also recommend the commission approves. And then the two final regulations were presenting waiver requests for our 205-CMR 24803-H, which is account registration and 24804-Age and identity verification. And upon review of those requests, our team is recommending an industry-wide a blanket or uniform waiver from the requirements through the effective date of the regulation, which the legal team has identified as September 1st, 2023. Is there any questions or specifics? I can go further, but that's the brief review. Patricia, is questions for Kristal or Director Ban? I have a comment for you more so. Go right ahead, Patricia. Yeah, it's just, it's really a comment. I'm comfortable with accepting the recommendation from the sports wagering division to extend a blanket waiver to all licensees. But at some point, I'd like to revisit that because we have a couple of operators who have indicated the need for a longer waiver for various reasons. So for instance, on the age and identity verification, I believe in this particular portion of our packet has a number of pages. So I'm not, probably not going to get it right, but I believe it's 10 PSI. They are transitioning to a new platform that will include more, I think, protective verifications. And so I think that we should consider that. I think their direct request is to have a permanent waiver from this requirement. Also, I believe in the case of PSI, they have asserted that with respect to maintaining the account registration, the specific account registration data we are asking for under 205 CMR 248.03 H. I don't know if that's the exact citation, but they have asserted that compliance with that provision is impossible. So the only question for today's purposes for me is whether the August 1st, August 31st, September 1st deadlines should be all aligned with the September 1st deadline just to give a little bit more wiggle room in case we are not able to mark up these matters again for consideration by the commission before August 1st or before the dates that are recommended. I think there's a more substantive discussion to be had on a couple of these requests. I can add, so on the last two that I had mentioned to 4803 H and to 4804, that's the reason right now we're just requesting the blanket waiver to go through September 1st is because that's when the reg would become official and at that time we'll know what the final language looks like and then they would come forth with their waivers as to what that regulation is and how much time they would need to implement or if they need the uniform waiver which is actually written into that regulation for a different provision to accomplish that. To your correct, that's, we're asking for this to not go into effect until the point where it's reached in the final language. I think that's to make that clear. Although, and I think were you mentioning the August 1st, the 24709, that one I don't, I think while you're seeing some dates that are extended well beyond the August 1st date that's because we asked specifically when their terms and conditions had their current promotions running through and some of them were very long but that doesn't mean they can't end them it's just how they have them in written currently on their platforms and in their promotions. So we were trying to choose a date that would be more of a cutoff date in which they have to get the bonuses out and everything finalized so that the uniformity is that the entire industry shuts off those types of promotional referral program at the same time as opposed to all of them having different dates. And nobody would get a competitive advantage if they all cut off at the same time. That's the only one that is a bit different. That's why that. It has that date of August 1st even though the regulation is already in motion. So can I ask you why the DraftKings August 31st? That's specific to their platform and the way it's set up. The others don't have a platform that's tied into daily fantasy that way so they need to run a technical, an entire new change to their technology in order to separate the promotional offerings. So they need the extra time where other operators did not indicate they would need that. And so even FanDuel that operates both doesn't need the extra time. They don't have the same setup in their system. But yes, we did talk to them. There was a flag to me. Perhaps we should look at them separately and deal with the promotional offers first. Does that help, Crystal? Sure. So commissioners do you, other than the question that was raised, did Crystal and Bruce's explanation answer questions and should we move on that? Commissioner Hill, are you leaving again? I'm comfortable moving forward. I just want to make sure everybody has shared their opinions. Okay. So with respect to promotional offers and the sports wagering division's recommendation, will we move forward on that recommendation? Madam Chair, I would move that in accordance with 205CMR 202.023, the commission issue a waiver to all licensed sports wagering operators from the requirements outlined in 205CMR 247.094 through August 1st, 2023, as granting the waiver meets the requirements specified in 205CMR 102.034 and is consistent with the purposes of GL chapter 23N. Second. Thank you. Any questions or edits to that motion? Okay. Michelle Bryant. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I say yes, I vote yes, so 5-0. Thank you. Moving on to your next recommendation with respect to this one scrolling down so they'll bear with me. With respect to 247.093 and the DRAC Kings exception. Do I have a motion on that or a question or comment? Any further clarification meeting? All right. Commissioner Skinner. I move that in accordance with 205CMR 202.023, the commission issue a waiver to DRAC Kings from the requirements outlined in 205CMR 247.093 through August 31st, 2023, as granting the waiver meets the requirements specified in 205CMR 102.034 and is consistent with the purposes of general laws chapter 23 in. Second. Excellent. Any edits, comments? Okay. Commissioner Bryant. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes, 5-0. So now in terms of the account registration, this is with respect to 248.033-H and furniture motion, and you will correct me if I need to get further guidance, but your recommendation is set forth in the memorandum. Do I have a motion? This is a fine question. I'm happy to make a motion relative to the September 1st date with the understanding that the sports wagering division will bring the matter back in advance of that should there be any continued issues, which I expect that there will be relative to compliance with these provisions. Absolutely. We anticipate we'll be bringing forth final waivers. Yep. Thank you. I move that in accordance with 205-CMR-202.023. The commission issue a waiver to all licensed sports wagering operators from the requirements outlined in 205-CMR-248.033-H through September 1, 2023, as granting the waiver meets the requirements specified in 205-CMR-102.034. It is consistent with the purposes of general laws chapter 23 in. Second. Great. Any other questions that it's, all right, Michelle Bryan? Aye. Michelle Hill? Aye. Michelle Skinner? Aye. Michelle Maynard? Aye. I vote yes. Fine. Zero. All right, the sports wagering division has made a recommendation with respect to the age and identity verification 248.044 resolution. Madam Chair, I move that in accordance with 205-CMR-202.023, the commission issue a waiver to all licensed sports wagering operators from the requirements outlined in 205-CMR-248.044 through September 1, 2023, as granting the waiver meets the requirements specified in 205-CMR-102.034. And it's consistent with the purposes of general laws chapter 23 in. Second. And it's comments. Michelle Bryan? Aye. Michelle Hill? Aye. Michelle Skinner? Aye. Michelle Maynard? Aye. Well, yes, five-zero. Great, thank you. We'll get these updates out and that is all for me today. That's all, I'll set for you. Thank you very much, Manager Bushman, and it's nice to see you. Okay, Director Band, you're all set then. Yes, ma'am, thank you. Okay, excellent, have a good day. You too. Thank you. And then we're gonna move to legal. And I see Councilor Grossman. I see we've got Councilor Kerriasson. Who's taking the lead today? Good morning, Madam Chair and Commissioner. So we have three items from legal today. The first is the draft of 205-CMR-230 review of a proposed agreement with the category three licensee that begins on page 58 of your packet. And I will turn it over to Meena MacKerrios from A&K to walk us through that draft. Thank you, Kerri. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. So the regulation in front of you, this is a new regulation, I believe Kerri, correct me if I'm wrong, we're recommending this go in the normal course, not as an emergency regulation, is 205-CMR-230. And this has to do with the review of agreements related to mobile or digital sports wage rate generally. And it sets out a process for category one or two operators to obtain commission approval of agreements with category three licensees. That's contemplated in the statute in 23N, Section 6B4. And this is intended to implement your review of that. It is broad in that it covers presumptively any agreement or an amendment to an agreement between category one and two operators and category three operators. So just to walk through sort of the layout of it, 230.011 sets that basic standard. 230.012 provides two basic exceptions. To that one are amendments as to form, that's the second one, sort of the easy kind of technical corrections don't always have to come back before the commission. The more substantive one is acceptance of standardized consumer terms of service in order to place a wager from one operator to another to the extent there is, once there is a relationship, there isn't a need to necessarily have every single piece of paper covered that way, it's for the broader agreements. And the general gist of this is in reviewing the agreements you would be authorized or expected to think about them the same way you'd be reviewing the applications in general and taking all of the same factions or account that you have during licensing. The Section 4 here, 230.014 contemplates preliminary approval so that if necessary operations can proceed while reviews ongoing in certain circumstances, the commission has discretion whether or not to grant that under this regulation. There's sort of an initial standard that is akin to a likelihood of success on the merits for the lawyers in the room and this idea that the commission wouldn't grant a preliminary approval if it's clear that final approval is unlikely. So it's a little different than the temporary license standard where it's not all the information is there, this is more of a, there has to be a showing up front. If preliminary approval is given the commission, that approval will last until you make a final determination positive or negative on the final approval. The rest of the regs shows up on page 59. It contemplates that the commission will make these decisions at open meetings for the final approval or rejection, of course, to the extent that there is an issue that requires entry to executive session as you contemplate this, contemplate a particular issue that wouldn't be precluded, but the final approval would happen at an open meeting of the commission. And the basis for rejecting an agreement are, again, as I mentioned, the outside very broad. One is the very broad standard that appears in the statute regarding if it will be considered disadvantageous to the interests of the commonwealth. For instance, the two sort of enumerated examples of that and they're not exclusive and that would be clear, it's not exclusive would be if there's a violation of any applicable law or any applicable consideration keeping in mind that there are these include category one entities. It's not just a violation of 23N, but if it would cause a violation or concerns under the consumer protection or safety responsible gaming, any other really consideration that might affect a CAT-1 operator's 23K operations as well as mattress or 23N operations. The second is a more technical one that if it would cause, if the nature of the agreement would essentially allow for any party to have a financial interest in more than, in more sports wager and licenses than they're permitted to under 23N. So these agreements can't be used to kind of monopolize licenses in ways not otherwise permitted by the statute. B is in a way a subset of the whole, the commission may decide. We're getting too close to that anyway. That's disadvantageous to the interests of the commonwealth but we want to state it because it's one of the more obvious examples of where that might happen. So that's the general, just a bit. Again, this is very broad. It's intended to be broad. Because it's not an immediate need, we don't see this as needing to be done by emergency, but do think it makes sense to start having this in place as the industry the industry starts approaching. It's almost full year since the last letter passed in it. So as the industry continues to mature in Massachusetts. Questions or comments? I mean, do you mind just the process between preliminary and the permanent? So there's going to be reliance on part of the operator, right? But I know no one loves to have time frames. Yeah. What are you thinking about that? I'm trying to imagine the steps between just a practical point of view, but what it looks like. Yeah, and I know Madam Chair, this is not what you meant, but just to be upfront about it, of course, there's no legal reliance. But I think one way to think about it is when the commission, we didn't wanna set up a timeline one way or another because these agreements could take a variety of forms. And so one, some may require more intensive review than others and the timing could be different for that. The way that we're contemplating it is if when you're presented with an agreement, the person of asking for approval, the sort of the parties asking for approval together, if they would like preliminary approval, they will have to make the case to you that preliminary approval is appropriate, it's necessary. And I think that would be an appropriate time for the commission to address issues such as, if we ultimately deny this, what will be the effect on patrons? Kind of harkening back to some of the conversations we had on temporary licenses, what happens if we unwind this relationship? What does that look like? And I think you can be very flexible in the time frames you set. So for instance, if you ultimately deny an application, it is deemed, it would be deemed withdrawn, but you might, for instance, at that point, allow the preliminary to extend for a little bit longer or to sort of have a wind down period. It also kind of puts the onus on the parties coming to you to give you a good understanding of why the agreement is likely to be okay in the first place. And so that really preliminary approval should be used to do additional due diligence on issues that might not be immediately apparent, but are not going to be, for one way to think about them, sort of aren't going to be deal breakers, but kind of are more logistical or might be more technical issues of, okay, how exactly are they going to collaborate? What exactly are they going to do on shared networks, for instance, and to give the commission, the sports wagering division, the IAB, depending on whoever it is, whoever needs to look at a particular agreement that time, but it will depend on, the commission's comfort with preliminary approval, I suspect will depend on what the ask is, what they're collaborating to do and how much needs to be set up up front to do that, whether it's appropriate or not. That's really helpful, though. Thank you, Commissioner Skinner. Mina, is the expectation that the operators or the category one and category three, tethered operators will come before the commission for preliminary approval for any existing agreements or is it the case that, because the commission issued the preliminary license, then those agreements were approved by implication? That's a good question. I think for, and Todd or Carrier-Caitlin, if again, if you know more about sort of the expectation here, please weigh in, those would in certainly going forward would be covered by this, to the extent that the approval was already issued within understanding that that relationship is part of the license. I don't think a separate approval is necessary, keeping in mind that the considerations and factors you'd be thinking about are essentially the same as what you went through during the licensing. So I think the short answer, Commissioner Skinner, is no for the existing ones, but substantive modifications, beyond a technical amendment would and any new relationship like that in the future might be necessary to the extent there's still a availability, for instance, for tethering if someone hasn't used both their tethering. Are there comments, questions on this regulation over non-emergency is recommended here? Do I have a motion there? Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve the Small Business Impact Statement and the draft of 205-CMR 230, as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today, and that staff be authorized to take the steps necessary to file the required documentation with the Secretary of the Commonwealth to begin the regulation publication process. I further move that staff be authorized to modify chapter or section numbers or titles to file additional regulation sections as reserved or to make any other administrative changes as necessary to execute the regulation publication process. Second. Any comments, comments? Michelle Ryan. Aye. Patricia Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Chair Maynard. Aye. I vote yes, 5-0. Excellent. Thank you. Moving on then to your next item. Who's managing this, Carrie? Jumping on that one. Thanks, Carrie and Mina. Good morning once again. I'm gonna join here by Christian Tavares, our in-house expert in gaming technical compliance manager. We're here to talk about an approval under section 205CMR 243.011X. You'll recall this deals with the technical security control audit that is required of all of the sports wagering operators within 90 days of commencing operations. There have been waivers put in place relative to that timeline, but we actually have an application that has come in for your consideration. Again, you'll recall that the audits have to be conducted by qualified independent technical experts. And those are subject to approval by the commission. The regulations do set out the standards by which such an application should be reviewed and we'll walk through those momentarily. We can also talk a little bit about what the technical security control audit is. And that is also set out in the regulations and certainly Christian can get into a little bit more detail if that would be helpful. But they look at things like vulnerability assessments, penetration tests and a review of the firewall rules, things along those lines. So it is an important component of the process. We have received one application to become a qualified independent technical expert and the standards for review are set out in, let's see, it's sub B in that section. So without further ado, I'd like to turn it over to Christian who can walk through the application. It's not included in the public packet. There are some sensitive pieces of information in there, but he can certainly speak to the contents of the submission. So Christian, if you will, please go ahead and let's talk about the application. Okay, all right. Thank you, Todd. So hello, commissioners, Madam Chair. I am Christian Tavares, the Game and Technical Compliance Manager and I will be presenting the recommendation to approve the company bulletproof as an independent technical security auditor according to the sportswear wagering regulation 243. The application was not included in the packet due to its cybersecurity sensitivity, but we sent them a form. We sent a form to the interested entities who want to perform the technical security control audit in Massachusetts, where they must provide proof on how they meet our qualifications. According to 243, the independent technical security expert must have education relevant or other relevant qualification, which bulletproof meets by, because, I'm sorry, because they provided security audits on sportswear wagering systems since 2018 and other jurisdictions for various clients. They must also have certifications that demonstrate proficiency and expertise in network penetration testing. Bulletproof provided copies of certifications that they obtained by their vice president and also their senior director of their InfoSec services. They also provided a list of certifications obtained by their proposed team members for the audit that they want to conduct. Lastly, they must have at least five years' experience performing technical security control audits, which they also meet. I contacted a reference that they provided and they confirmed that bulletproof has been performing technical security control audits for Caesar Sportsbook since 2018. So if that's what I have, if there are any questions, I can answer them now. Thank you, Christian. And so just to be clear, to reassure the document that we receive is the application that's confidential. I believe Councilor Grossman read his legal guidance and his remarks with respect to the applicable regulation. Christian, I'm going to turn to you. It's your recommendation that we do move forward on this particular application. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Right, and Councilor Grossman, is it your, are you saying that all of the regulation requirements have been fulfilled? That is the recommendation based on the experts in-house who have reviewed the application. Questions, and Christian, excellent job. Thank you very much. Thank you. Questions, Commissioner O'Brien, are you leaving in or are you ready to move? Okay, nobody was moving. Any further questions on this? This is a new process, anything? But Commissioner Skinner. I'm happy to give a motion. Make a motion out of chair if you're ready for that. Yeah, thank you very much. I move that the commission approve bulletproof as a qualified independent technical expert in accordance with 205-DMR 243.011x. Second. Any questions, comments? Okay, Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Commissioner Maynard. Hi. And I vote yes, 5-0. Excellent, thank you, Christian. And thank you for all that you've been doing. You know, we don't get a chance to see you often, so thank you. Thank you very much. All right, then we're turning to the ad regulation. Who's leading this? Oh, I see three. Monahan, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Mina and I will be leading this discussion, although this is largely a discussion for the commission. So what we are bringing back for, well, not back, what we are bringing for discussion today, not for a vote, but just for sort of an initial discussion, is a conversation about how our regulations, and in particular our advertising regulations address advertisements that talk about something that's winner-lose or can't, you know, unable to lose or things like that. And the commission had suggested that it wanted to have a discussion about where the reg stands and whether any amendments should be made going forward. So I would direct you to page 66 of the packet, which is where 256.06 starts. That's the main provision of the reg. And I'll turn it over to Mina for a little bit more of an introduction. Hello everyone. And as Caitlin said, this is more for discussion. I think what we'd like to do just to set the table for the discussion is point out ways in which the reg already addresses promotional offers that suggest that a patron will succeed, win or lose, and how that might be addressed by the commission. I would say at the outset that this is another part of the sort of the evolution of the regs and how they might apply to the industry. The commission naturally will have to do some interpretation as things evolve and as practices evolve. And there may be room for further additions to regs, but also want to, you know, I think it's important to keep in mind that no matter what the final word said, there will be room for needing to apply the regs to particular facts and kind of starting to build up a body of case law, if you will, around what they mean. So first, the first place I would direct you to is 250606C, which is on page 64. So this is in the section regarding the, regarding false or misleading advertising. And it states that with the intro, no advertising, marketing, branding or other promotional materials published air display, disseminated, distributed by or behalf of any operator. This is the full broad spectrum. We're not talking, there's no exclusions on this one. Shell and C says, inquire promotes sports wagering as free of risk in general or in connection with a particular promotion or sports wagering offer. The, our read of this is that if there is a statement that a bet will be paid, win or lose without any further context of what that means or what it means if presumably there is an opportunity for the wager to not succeed in terms of the prediction being correct. If I, that it would be implying a bet being free of risk if there was no other language. Similarly, the very following section kind of supplements this with some particular language, such as prohibiting describing wagers as free, cost free or free of risk. If the player needs to incur any loss or risk their own money to use or withdraw winnings from the wager. This was put in, you might recall at the outset, specifically to make clear to operators that it would not be okay to advertise a risk, excuse me, a wager as risk-free if what is really meant by that is the money that you put in from your own personal funds as a patron will stay with the operator and what you get back might be gaming credits or sports wager and credits going forward. So these are these two sections were explicitly designed to guard against offers suggests there is nothing for the patron to lose, broadly speaking. And I think our view is that the commission has broad discretion under both those provisions to look at advertising or promotions that suggest or state or imply. I just want to be clear that the reason we did not use every single word that one could think of is someone can always think of another word to get at the same point. And the intent here is that if the implication is if I as a patron, I'm going to put in my own money, I'll be, I can't possibly lose that money because no matter how the game that I'm wagering on or the sporting event I'm wagering on comes out that either better be true, the money will be refunded to me or it needs to be very clearly explained or that suggestion should it be made at all. If it says, if you win or lose, if you lose, you'll get wagering credits. That's a different story. And again, that has to be clear. That comes into the second kind of group of pieces of the language here that might also be at issue. The 2505 CMR 250604235 which are on page, excuse me. This is a couple of pages up here on page 63. These are the provisions that get at the requirement to clearly conspicuously disclose material terms. So if what is meant by win or lose is win and you get money and lose, you get sports wagering credits, for instance, that disclosure or that condition needs to be stated in accordance with these regs, these provisions of the reg. Just to note, again, noting the kind of breadth of different ways and there's a reason these were not ever intended to be mutually exclusive the idea was to have a blanket of coverage of potential protections within the regs. There are other provisions in here as well that could come into play depending on the context of how a winner or lose promotion or advertising, speaking broadly, are set and without going into the language, they show up predominantly in 250604 where we just were and 250606 which was the first one I mentioned. For instance, there's a general note that advertising, marketing or branding may not be unfair or deceptive. It's a broad provision and that could apply and so for some of the reasons I mentioned already or some other sleight of hand or other context type issue that where the commission says really in this case that's an unfair way to promote that. Similarly, there is the provision 250604 for regarding advising a particular individual to place a particular bet and again, a win or lose bet in that context could be problematic. And finally, I'll note that 250606B which is back on page 64 specifically for hibits, advertising that suggests that social financial or personal success is guaranteed. The general intent of that was more for sort of a creating a cultural perception through advertising that folks who engage in law support spending win and spend are going to necessarily be successful and live glamorous lives, but it also could apply in a specific circumstance where a winner or lose bet is financial success if it implies that financial success is guaranteed. So the big takeaway and I know sort of very quickly went through a lot of different provisions here is that in our view, there is an intermeshed group of regulations already in place to catch different ways in which someone might want to use advertising or promotions that suggest that there is everything to be gained but nothing to be lost from playing without fairly and accurately describing what could happen to someone's actual money from their bank account if the wager does not go the way that they hoped it would. Thank you for that, Nina. Commissioners, I think we did ask for this discussion because we wanted, I think, Commissioner Barian you can chime in and we wanted to make sure that we thought was a consensus on our intent was captured. Commissioner Barian. Yeah, that's correct because there were, I mean, to Nina's point, some of the promotions I think that we see or hear kind of tweak the language a little bit as if what was in there was the outside boundaries of the barred language. And so I did think this conversation was necessary for the five of us to talk and probably just reiterate that what the intent of that regulation was to make sure that the offers complied with what we said and that the disclosures complied with the requirements. And so things like when or lose, things that don't make clear that what you're getting back is really credits that have to be spent within X days or weeks rather than your money back that all needs to be very clear in the language of the promotion and the disclaimers. Other comments, questions? Commissioner Mayor, are you leaning in or can't tell? Thank you. Yes, I agree with Commissioner O'Brien. I think that, you know, this is notice to everyone that we are going to ensure that the patrons of the Commonwealth are protected and that they get the deal that they are signing up for and that any violation of this regulation will be seriously dealt with. Commissioner Filler, Commissioner Skinner. Nothing to add to that, Madam Chair. I think we're all on board. All on board, Commissioner Skinner. I agree with that. We're not starting new territory here. There are other jurisdictions who have taken issue with this winter lose advertising language and have acted on the promotions that have been offered in their jurisdiction by assessing fines to some of our licensees. And so to Commissioner Maynard's point, we are paying attention and we'll address any violations accordingly. But I agree, I guess from a practical point of view, I'm very happy to this exercise because now the operators have really the roadmap to all of the relevant regulatory provisions that capture our intent as opposed to trying to just focus on any singular right. So thank you. This is a really valuable summary, should be noted in terms of this is available, of course, as a recorded conversation. Anything else? Well, I know that we're not needing to act on this. It was for the discussion. Do you think that we need to revisit this in any way, Nina? I don't. I just want to add for the sake of completeness because we were focused on 256 here. And I think, again, as I've said, I think there's enough in 256 to cover this issue as I don't think you need to revisit the right. But I would say to the extent that this is intended to be a reminder to advertisers who work with operators, to the operators themselves, et cetera, that they should also be mindful of some of the other provisions in 247, 248 and the newly implemented 257 or in, excuse me, not implemented yet, but in progress 257 that we discussed a week or two ago and it's going through the process now, which also requires a lot of full disclosure. And for instance, the reason that cued my madam chairs, I think there was a mention of how long somebody needs to keep their money in to be able to respond. And that's something that's going to be directly addressed if 257 passes as promulgated or it's actually maybe 247. So it's a reminder that folks need to read and understand their regs and that's, the reiteration is helpful from my perspective to remind folks how they work together. Excellent. Excellent. All right, anything else that we need from our legal team commissioners? All right, have an excellent day, Nina. Thank you and thank you to the internal legal team. And I think Paul Comner's might have been involved in this. We thank him as well. He was, I'll pass. Yeah, please, I'll pass on our thanks. Other business commissioners. Actually, would like to bring something up madam chair. And if you don't think it's appropriate for this time, maybe we can talk about adding it as a gender item at a future meeting. Over the last two or three weeks, we have been involved in discussions with the on-core going across the street and building over there. And there's been a lot of discussions with the townspeople. We've had the hearings, as you know, which I'm very proud that we did and I'm glad we did so that we could hear from the citizens of Everett. In regards to the expansion, I thought maybe it might behoove the commission to either write a letter to the town, a city of Everett in a couple of regards. One of those regards is I was always apprehensive about calling for an election because a special election to ask how people feel about the expansion because of the amount of money that it would cost the city to do that. However, here we are in June and we are now only a few months away from city elections. And I thought maybe, Madam Chair, it would behoove us to send a letter that would respectfully request that the city put a non-binding question on either the primary ballot or the general election, which would be in November, since it's already happening. And let me just rephrase what I just said, a non-binding question, which is something many municipalities do to try and get a flavor of an issue, whether it be a new school building, an expansion of something or other reasons. A second letter that I would like to see written or at least discussed here is a letter to the city council outlining some of the things that this commission has done to be helpful to the city of Everett. What I heard through the testimony of the citizens was the fact that public safety needs have increased, traffic has increased. And I'm not sure that the citizens of Everett understand what we as a commission have done through the Community Mitigation Fund to help with many of the needs that were brought up. And as a very proud member of this commission, sometimes it's frustrating when you hear from people that they're not aware of what we actually have done over the last few years, many years to help in many of the issues that were brought up during testimony. And then my third letter, request of discussion would be to EVH and to the mayor's office respectfully suggesting that they might wanna open up the... Host community agreement. Thank you, the host community agreement, which is something that we kept hearing over and over. Now, I suppose we could mandate that in a condition moving forward, but really and truly that is something that should be happening between those two entities without us being that involved. But that came up time and time again. So Madam Chair, these were three issues that I was thinking about over the last couple of weeks that I wanted to bring to the attention of the commission to see how they felt to take their temperature, which I love, so that we can respond to what we heard from the citizens of Everett, but at the same time, letting the process move forward in a way where we are not mucking things up. Before I turn to Chancellor Grossman, just one, these are self-sufficient discussions, so we'll probably have to mark it up appropriately on the agenda, but to tee them up, particularly with respect to number one, because we did have significant public meetings on the referendum legal question that was presented to us. So I know that Councilor Cohns will definitely refer to that one. With respect to your second letter, we can put it on the agenda if Councilor Grossman thinks that's necessary. We always like to make sure that folks understand all the work. So perhaps that one, we could, we can consensus today that it could be a letter could be drafted on that and that's with respect to, you were really talking about community mitigation. Certainly, I appreciate that you noted that we've had multiple public hearings on this to get input. And then on the third one, that topic has certainly come up. We have not had, we haven't taken formal action on the post-community agreement, but it certainly came up in our hearings. So I would turn to Councilor Grossman as to what steps, if any, we would have to take to submit a letter of that nature on the respected Commissioner Hill's third request. Happy to address that. The first thing I would pick up on though, as you did, Madam chairs, that this is not on the agenda for today. And these are very substantive issues and really shouldn't be talking about this. I mean, certainly the petitioner is not aware that we're even talking about it right now and may have something to say about some of this. There's certainly also a lot of legal issues tangled up in all three of those issues that were just raised that I wanna make sure that the commissioner is fully apprised of. We could draft letters so you could see what they might look like if we're so inclined, but I think this would probably all be best to be marked up for discussion in the future. My suggestion on the drafting was with respect to only the second one because that seemed a little bit less legal, but we can take your advice and wait to get briefed before anybody engages in any work. That makes sense to my fellow commissioners. What I like Commissioner Hill is that you raise these but we have to mark them up and key them up so that all interested parties and we can get compared to commissioners other thoughts. Like Madam Chair, I just agree that I'm glad that Commissioner Hill raised the issue. Oftentimes, and I've said it in the office, so I'll say it publicly commissioners are limited in their statutory abilities and sometimes to move something forward you've got to bring it up in a public meeting. So I appreciate it, Commissioner Hill. Yeah, absolutely. And I know usually we have commissioner updates at the end. It's probably that's exactly so. I always welcome these kinds of issues being raised and it can be done in advance even better, but sometimes we just need to talk about it right here in public. So we just can't necessarily act. And so the interest of parties, we can certainly fight them to today's preliminary discussion from commissioner Hill. I knew this would be a multi-step process. I figured. All right. Anything else you wanna add to that? The press are, are we ready for a motion for adjourn? Patricia, are you leaning in for that? Well, I was going to, to give an update. And so it probably, this item probably falls under commissioner updates. So if we go backwards just a little bit, the procurement team has identified and selected an audit firm, an independent auditor in connection with the DEI audit of all of the category one licensees. And so it is a firm that we are very familiar with RSM was the successful bidder. And next steps are to formally notify the licensees that the commission is undertaking this audit. And we expect that to occur next week. There is also the business of finalizing the statement of work with RSM. And we expect that to be well underway next week as well. That's excellent news. Thank you, commissioner scorer. And thank you to John Scully and the procurement team. Really, that we are moving on now. Any other commissioner update or items that we need to address? Okay. I need a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Second. Thank you. Any comments? Okay, everyone. Have a great day. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hills. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes. Thanks to everyone.