Take a roll call and we'll get started. Commissioner Cameron. Good morning. I'm here. Commissioner Brian. Here. Commissioner Zunica. Here. Good morning. And commissioner Stepans. Good morning, everyone. I'm here. We'll just pause on that for a second. Yeah. Today. First, I just want to establish that we are recording this meeting and is being conducted using remote connectivity. That's afforded to us through an executive order that governor Baker issued way back in March that allows public bodies like ours to be able to, to meet. Using. Remote technology and we've been able to take advantage of that. Even today during the middle of this. Massive snow storm and allowed us to be very nimble and meeting. We've been very appreciative of that. Today is December 17th. It is now a 1003. And for our original commissioners. Today is public meeting number 330. And I suspect that that rings a little bit of. Some sentiment or particularly. Those of you who were here from the very start. I would just like to make on some initial remarks. It would be an understatement to say 2020. Has been a remarkable year. And one full of changes. Today marks another milestone. I'm sorry. Excuse me. I wanted to restart because I want to get this right. My apologies. A little technical issue for me that I brought up a statement that didn't include what I want to say. I would say, and again, it would be an understatement to say 2020 has been a remarkable year and one full of changes. We have seen. We have navigated the impacts of the relentless. Reach of this virus. And we have to pause today and reflect that over the course of the last nine and a half months. We have lost 300,000 of our fellow Americans. And now over 11,000 in the Commonwealth. To this devastating virus. We have expressed our gratitude and continue to express our gratitude for those on the front line. Our medical heroes. Pharmacist grocery delivers all of those who are at the tellers and the cashiers, the truck drivers, the postal service men and postal service women. And of course, all of our first responders. We thank them today. We know that their work will have to sadly continue well into 2021. And we wish them. Safety and their well-being be secure. And we thank them for allowing us to be able to operate so safely from home. But today I can shift gears now. Today marks another milestone for the MGC. I think that we all knew that this day would come when we would have to bid farewell. To one of the MGC's pioneers commissioner Bruce Stevens. And today marks Bruce's final scheduled. Public meeting as a commissioner. Here at the Massachusetts gaming commission. In a moment you'll hear from my fellow commissioners. Two of whom have served with Bruce for the past eight years. They may decide to express their sentiments privately, but they have the opportunity today if they would like to express their sentiments. But they, they do share publicly will undeadly share the impact that Bruce has had during his tenure as a steady. Com presence on this body. Bruce you are always a champion for the residents and small businesses of the Commonwealth. And you've brought to your work at the MGC a keen understanding of the communities in western Massachusetts. And a commitment to the betterment of our Commonwealth. Over the course of this pandemic. I have been so appreciative of Bruce's leadership. As we have navigated an unprecedented crisis. I'm so grateful for Bruce's leadership. More, but more than anything. And I believe I can say this with great confidence. I am grateful for his. Caring demeanor. And personal investment. In every one of the MGC's employees. And stakeholders. And I know how much they're going to enjoy working with him and benefit from his expertise in highly regulated. Industries in the Commonwealth. The CCC's gain belt comes at a cost to us at the gaming commission. Your appointment, Bruce, however, is indeed a true win-win for the Commonwealth. The MGC will look forward to welcoming a new commissioner to our ranks in 2021. But I know that can speak for all of us when I say that Bruce will always hold a place here at the MGC. As an honorary member of our team. For that. Thank you. Commissioner Stevens. And I will start with commissioner Cameron. If you would like to comment now. I sure. I do want to let everyone know that commissioner Stevens has agreed to come back to visit us in January as well. And I would like to thank him for that. And I would like to thank him for a little, another send off. But today is his first formal, his last formal meeting with us. Commissioner Cameron. Yes. And commissioner Stevens, you know, it's, it's, I don't have to say goodbye, which is such a nice thing. Because I know we will be lifelong friends. And I will see you many, many times in the future. And that, that friendship is, is really. It's a really good thing. I would say crying, but certainly having some tense moments with the commission. And the chairwoman. Judd Stein said it well. And she said, you're calm, steady leadership. And I learned to appreciate that early on because that certainly was a different style. And, but which we had to learn to appreciate, learned how to work together, learn how to build this commission. at all, when I met Bruce, his kids were little girls, they are now high school and middle school young ladies. I have such a better appreciation for Western Mass and some of the nice restaurants out there due to Commissioner Stevens. Just the whole journey has been magnificent. I know this is a great opportunity for Commissioner Stevens, I'm really happy for him because I know he'll add great value to that new commission much newer than ours and they are still building. So I think the experiences here will only add to, you know, to really add value to the new commission. So again, I am not saying goodbye because I know there'll be many more opportunities to get together. So thank you and good luck with the new position. Commissioner Zuniga, I know this is your lunch buddy. So it may be hard for you to say public words, but would you like to comment? I will, I will, I'm here and I'm gonna miss out my lunch buddy for sure. I'll be brief in order to get to the business application because I know there will be other opportunities as Commissioner Cameron was saying as well as the chair to have a proper send off that includes some funny stories and other things. But I believe that this appointment is really a reflection on all the work, fantastic work that Bruce has done in his tenure here and in his experience before. A lot to mention here. If I may say so, I think it's also a reflection on the agency and the respect that the agency has with our appointing authorities, with the public at large. And that comes from all the work that all of us not, and I don't mean commissioners, I mean all employees. The new commissioners, everybody that has come and has been with us. I think it reflects on that as well. The things that now kind of these benefits and the Commonwealth at large benefits are precisely the things that we're gonna miss here in Bruce. Of course, we'll miss his great contributions. Of course, not everything was unanimous, but that's part of the deal. We're gonna miss very much his perspective, his collaborative approach. He's the meaner as Kathy was saying. His desire to create consensus and that's very important in the work we do. He's disarming humor and of course, his friendship. So congratulations and as Gail says, we'll be in touch. Commissioner O'Brien. Thank you. To reiterate what everyone else has said too, I absolutely gonna miss having Bruce next door when we go back into the office. He was one of the first faces that I met when I came down and just like everybody else said, a nice quiet, calm, steady presence. I felt like I got to have an office next door to my big brother who just that much further ahead in the commission and feeling kids and dogs and everything else. I likewise, I'm confident I'm gonna continue that friendship after he leaves the commission. I think maybe save the story in detail for another day, but anyone who doesn't know the story of how Bruce ended up running for city council in Springfield should really hear the story. It's classic Bruce, but I think it's very fortunate that it happened because I think it started him and committed him to public service. And I think public service has benefited and continues now to benefit from an incredibly intelligent, thoughtful and just fundamentally decent man who is continuing in public service. I think the cannabis commission and the Commonwealth will benefit from that. I know we will miss him dearly, but again, we will keep in touch, I'm sure. And I've said it to him already, but congratulations, Bruce. Commissioner Stevens, I know that we have further sentiments that the executive director will share on behalf of the team, we'd love to hear from you now if you'd like to comment now. The stage is yours anytime today that you want. I'm humbled by my colleagues' comments and yours, Madam Chair. I know we have some other people who have dialed in who are anxious to get to the business of the agenda. And I was fully expecting a roast more than some complimentary thoughts from my colleagues, but I'm happy to have us just kind of move ahead with the agenda, and if it's okay, I'd be happy to say something that's for meeting with us. You know what? We will allow you at any time to share your sentiments. So Karen, why don't we, I guess we'll turn then first off to item number two, which our secretary, Commissioner Stevens, will have you lead on. Thank you. Sure, thank you, Madam Chair. My colleagues in your packet, you have the minutes from the November 3rd, 2020 meeting.  She has been a great colleague to work with. And I know that she is working very hard to get some back meetings all caught up, and I'm gonna have a chance to review those and make sure that they're in the appropriate hands for review at a future meeting. But I just wanna thank her for her good work and really working hard over these last few weeks to get caught up. So she doesn't leave this for someone else. But in your meeting package, you have November 3rd, 2020 meeting minutes. I would move their approval as always subject to any corrections for typographical errors or any other non-material matters. Second. Thank you. Did everyone have a chance to review them? Yeah, and of course it's the hearing for them. Any comments, suggested edits? I'll set, then I'll do a roll call vote. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zunica. Aye. Commissioner Stemmins. Aye. And I vote yes. Shara. Five-zero. And I am going to miss saying that to you. Real quickly, on behalf of all of us, Shara, thank you so much for your work you pivoted during the remote world. So well and have been a partner to support me throughout technical challenges. Folks don't know that Shara is sometimes a little scribe to me to remind me of things. So I have very much appreciated all of her support. I also know Shara has a very exciting opportunity. She also is going to stay with the state in the Commonwealth. And so again, our loss, but win for the Commonwealth. So we'll proceed. Thank you. And I think then it's a good segue to item number three, Karen, for the administrative update. Thank you, Madam Chair. So before getting into the official agenda item, I did want to briefly comment on behalf of the NGC staff about the departure of Commissioner Stemmins. First of all, Bruce, congratulations on your appointment. But above all, I'd like to thank you for all you've done as a leader in this organization over the last eight and a half years. I would like the public to know just how beloved Bruce is by the entire team here. Bruce has a special way of connecting with members of the staff in all different divisions and on a personal level. I routinely saw him checking in with different people in the organization, working to make their jobs better and furthering the mission of the agency. One of those people, a gaming agent, Supervisor Eric Cantel wrote Bruce a note that I will see ced on upon joining this departure. And I received permission from him to share it today because I thought it was important to communicate how the staff, the heart and soul of the organization felt about you, Bruce. And that reads, Dear Bruce, I wish you all the best in your new position. From the beginning, you made everyone in the room feel welcome.  You exuded such knowledge and commitment to the MGC. I want you to know you'll be greatly missed and virtually impossible to replace. Please frame the certificate for winning the first poker tournament. All the best to you and your family, sincerely Eric. So Bruce, it has been my honor to work for such a good and decent man. We will all miss you very much. And to the people that work at the Cannabis Control Commission, you are so lucky. So I just wanted to say a few words. As Kathy mentioned, we'll have more time to talk to you about your thanks we have for you and your new position going forward with the staff. First item on the administrative update is the staffing update. So as Kathy mentioned today, not only do we have the departure of Bruce Stebbins, but also we are recognizing the departure of our paralegal, Sharad Hadar, who's been so instrumental in making sure that these remote public meetings are successful. Sharad worked in the IEB before going over to legal and I still remember interviewing for her position and I'm sure she knocked that out of her part. So it's no surprise she has been stood up by the OHHS. So before turning it over to our boss to say a few words, I would like to say thank you, Sharad, for all you've done for this organization. We're going to miss you very much. So I'll turn it over to Todd just for that staffing update. Well, thank you Karen and good morning to everyone. And hello, Sharad, I appreciate the opportunity to publicly offer a farewell message. And Sharad, it's always difficult to say goodbye to a person who's been such a positive presence and a fixture in one's life for so many years. And this is certainly the case for me when it comes to you. However, any sorrow I may be feeling is certainly tempered by the knowledge that you're getting a chance to pursue a really great career opportunity and undertake an interesting new challenge. I'll always be grateful to you and admire the tremendous time and effort you invested in really understanding every aspect of your job so that you can produce a really first class work product. There's certainly no one who works harder than Sharad does. And she's been responsible for many areas that may be considered the sausage-making end of our legal duties, meaning we all ultimately see a really nice finished product, but don't always realize the incredible effort that went into getting it there. This often involves largely unheralded or celebrated work, but work that is important nonetheless, really important and legally significant. For example, there's a tremendous amount of energy that goes into producing the written minutes of these commission meetings, which Shar has done and done well for quite some time. Not only does it require careful attention to detail, but the ability to synthesize into a few written pages, what is often hours of complex policy and legal discussion. And Sharad has also overseen the regulation adoption process. And what some may not fully appreciate is that when the commission moves to vote a draft regulation through the process, it involves navigating a complex maze of legal requirements that includes the preparation and filing of a wide array of legal documents with a variety of different authorities, all on a very rigid time schedule. It's not a process that's for the faint of heart, but Sharad has been able to traverse this difficult terrain tremendously well over the years, oftentimes under some really exceptional circumstances. The list goes on, but those are just two examples of the contributions you've made to this agency that I for one will always really appreciate. So thank you for your tremendous diligence to the position, but more than that, thank you for being such a thoughtful, conscientious and valuable contributor to the commission. And of course, thank you for being a friend. Miss so much about having you here as part of our team, but you can know that as you depart, you've left this place a better place than you found it. And I wish you and your beautiful family only good things moving forward. So thank you and I wish you a fond farewell and hope to keep in touch. Thank you. Wow. Thank you very much. So I do just want to say thank you so much for the E-card. That was really nice of everybody. And thank you to Katrina for making that happen. So I also just want to say, Todd, thank you for being one of the best bosses I've ever had and experience that I've had at the gaming commission has helped me really grow professionally and personally. And I get to take that with me. So that is, that's invaluable. And I still want to, you know, once things get back on track, I still would like to meet up and celebrate milestones with the commission and all that. And I'll be, I'll be right down the street. So, and if anyone needs me, I'll, um, I'll forward my personal phone number and email. So I can keep it. So thank you so much. Great. Thank you so much, Sarah. Okay. So next on the agenda item, the three B is the onsite casino update. As you are aware on December 8th, Governor Baker announced COVID-19 order 57, which took effect on November 13th. That order enhanced some restrictions, including gathering limits. However, did not impact the current casino operations. That order, not furthering limiting, further limiting casino operations specifically is consistent with the recent case of derosure versus the governor, which was issued on December 10th. And so, I think that's a good point. And I think that's a good point. The SJC upheld the governor's use of emergency powers, exercise under the civil defense act to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. That case did note that. Uh, casinos are highly regulated by the gaming commission. Massachusetts only had three casinos and the high level of regulation. Uh, less than the risk of the spread of COVID-19. At that stuff. And so, we're still in the process of getting rid of the coronavirus. Clearly the pandemic and the restrictions are getting near some, but we know especially now that we still need to require a high level of compliance by the licensees. And cooperation by casino patrons. This is not the time to let up. We need to hang in there a little while longer. Uh, as the public health experts are advising. happening at the casino. OK, thanks, Karen. Good morning, Chair. Good morning, commissioners, and good morning, Commissioner Stebbins. Generally, since the last update that we gave two weeks ago on December 3, there's continued to be broad compliance with the COVID health and safety measures by the three licensees, as well as by the patrons. We're now in week six of the required early closing period. Prior to the week six, all three licensees were on a 24-7 schedule. And now, as you know, they are closing nightly no later than 9.30 PM, and hotels remain closed at Encore and MGM. I worked on site at Encore last Friday and walked to the casino floor at around 5.30. I saw firsthand from the time you got into the elevators in the garage, the signage, the markings on the floor for distancing security protocols as you entered the casino floor. I went in and out a few times to several security stations and noticed the consistent protocols coming through. The sanitizer throughout the property, the plexiglass, where it was supposed to be at the slot, dividing the slot positions, and at the table games, chairs removed at slots and table games, allowing the distancing, mass compliance by staff and patrons throughout, no one walking around with beverages. So generally, those were my observations and have been the reports that we've gotten over the past couple of weeks. I'd like to ask Bruce Band to give you some specifics of what his team has been observing over the past couple of weeks. Yes. Over the past several weeks, we've kind of observed that casinos really haven't exceeded capacity limits. They've all remained actually below 50% at all three properties. Bottle necks like elevators and things have not been an issue. Security's done a good job of keeping the separation. There's always my new problems, but they've taken care of those quickly and correctly. The casinos have been keeping up with having the patrons keep their masks on and keeping the separation in any line or anything like that, especially with promotional giveaways, which tend to be problematic. And they've done an excellent job with that. The closings at 9.30 have been going well. They've been getting the patrons out in a timely fashion. And overall, they've done an excellent job with all the protocols. OK, great. So if there are no questions about those general measures, I did want to report on the reported positive COVID cases that we have been notified of from the casinos. It's no surprise that we would see positive cases being reported consistent with what is happening in the Commonwealth and the nation. As you know, the casinos are required to notify the IEB whenever they become aware of an employee who has tested positive for COVID-19. They also notify the Board of Health and their respective community. They've taken that responsibility seriously and responsibly. And as part of that discourse with an affected employee, they have consistently mobilized to temporarily close and deeply affected spaces where that's appropriate. They've conducted their own contact tracing through discussions with the employee and through utilizing the significant surveillance tools that they have. Follow all CDC and DPH guidelines in their personnel policies around COVID leave and testing before returning to work of an affected employee. They have measures that are part of their plans for stringent back-of-the-house training and signage and hygiene and mass compliance and distancing. And they are taking steps on a continuous basis to ensure that the employee population follows all of those health and safety guidelines. So to date, over the past approximately six months since the requirements to notify went into effect on June 23rd, we have been notified of a total of 80 positive cases arising in casino employees. It is notable that employees have largely indicated that they believe they contracted the virus outside of work, usually reporting that they believe they contracted it from a household member. But this number, this 80 number is across all three properties and dates back to the past, over the past six months. I'd like to try to give some context to the 80 number. So over the past six months since reopening, and since they've been reporting, the number of active employees across all three properties has ranged from approximately 4,400 active employees to approximately 6,300 employees. And that range is attributable to, you know, the reopening happened, then amenities were added, hotels were opened, Encore opened its hotel, MGM opened on a restricted basis. And now, you know, there was the 24-7 operating period, now we're back to the 930 closures. So all of those changes affected employee staffing. So that's why I'm giving the range. Notable again that while on property, employees remain masks subject to the sanitization rules. Also, we have seen no concerning trends in employee population concentration of any outbreaks in any on-site areas of the casinos. So generally, we thought it was important to report that number to you now, and we'll try to answer any questions that you might have about that. Questions, fellow commissioners, Commissioner Cameron. Yeah, just a comment. Certainly that number is concerning.  But I think the important part of your report was this vigilance with compliance, meaning that both, you know, all of our licensees are in fact really vigilant about the compliance measures that are in place. So it seems to me that they are taking it very seriously, although it is concerning that some employees have contracted the virus. Other questions or comments or observations? Commissioners. Yes, if I may, a great report. Thank you. I guess we'll continue to have this, like we have been doing in recent weeks, and what you suggest is important in your report is to look at trends or look for trends that may be worrisome given all the efforts that we have and that we know are in place. So thank you for that report, and we'll stay tuned. Loretta, if I could just add, you're also confident in the protocols that the licensee takes once they understand an employee has been, is contagious or has contracted the virus? So they do follow CDC guidelines. They have COVID leave policies, and all of the reporting that's been done to me is that those policies have been implemented consistently with every report that they have. There also are instances where the positive person lives with another casino employee who is not at the time positive, consistent with the public health guidelines, personnel policies, place that person on COVID leave as well, the other household member on COVID leave as well with the testing requirement before return. So every notification I get is accompanied by that kind of detail if impacted in that way. So it appears by all of the reporting makes it apparent that they're taking their responsibility on these communications with the employees and with their reporting obligations seriously. Thank you. Any further questions for Loretta on this part of your report? I don't have a question, more of a comment in line with the other comments that have been made, which is what one of the things that I've been most interested in each time we get this number update is the contact tracing and the indications consistently appear to be primarily if not universally community spread as the reason for the positives. And I am pleased with what appears to be the effectiveness of the rules and the compliance that we put in place and the compliance by the licensees. Even as cases are going up statewide, it does seem to be consistent that those measures have been relatively effective in terms of making sure there isn't continued spread. And the policies Loretta, you just talked about in terms of supporting the employees to make sure that that continues has enabled the casino industry to continue forward during all of this. So I thank you for it. I'm interested to hear the numbers every time you come forward with it. Thank you. Loretta, do you wanna continue? Sure. So next I wanted to report to you that on December 4th, the IEB issued a notice of non-compliance to Encore relating to over service of alcoholic beverages to patrons on three instances on August 2nd, August 29th and September 4th. This was the first notice of non-compliance regarding alcohol to Encore. And although the notice issued in early December and I'm reporting this to you now, each instance was addressed in real time in August and September by the IEB with the casino and measures were put into place at the time. All three instances shared a common fact pattern and involved over serving alcohol to a patron who in each instance should not have been served. In the August 29th instance, our investigation established that the signs of intoxication would have been observable when the last drink was served to the patron. He was served his last drink at 3.09 in the morning. This was obviously 1.24. Our operations were in effect and the soon thereafter fell after getting up from his seat at a slot machine, hit his head and was tended to and evaluated by casino first aid before being escorted to safety. The other two instances violated a rule that is codified in the internal controls and the rule states that no more than three drinks can be served to a patron in one hour. In one instance, four drinks were served in an hour. In another instance, five drinks were served in an hour. In the August second instance, the individual appeared intoxicated after the service of the last drink and he was aggressive to a server and disruptive at the cage. In the September fourth instance, the individual also appeared intoxicated after the service of the last drink. He confronted another patron, refused at that point to comply with the mass policy and ultimately was placed under arrest by the GEU for disorderly conduct. So the beverage license is tied to the gaming license and the commission has always put a high priority on enforcing adherence to the rules around the service of alcohol. There's mandated training, specific internal controls, monitoring and reporting all built into the enforcement mechanisms and for obvious public safety reasons. And the issue takes on an additional dimension in the midst of this pandemic because public health also depends on patrons adhering to the masking, distancing and hygiene measures that are put into place. Obviously intoxication can interfere with a person's compliance with those safety measures and puts people like security and our GEU members at a heightened risk when they are then called on to interact with those individuals. So over services unacceptable at any time and at this time as well, the IAB wanted to go on record with the formal notice of non-compliance so that if this happens again, a monetary fine would be available. As you know, the notice of non-compliance is a prerequisite to a fine. So as I mentioned, measures were put into place right away. More comprehensive measures were directed by the IAB and multiple measures were put into place on Encore's own initiative. And I would like to ask Bruce Bande and Senior Enforcement Council, Kate Hart again, to talk about Bruce, to talk about what measures were put in place right away and Kate to talk about where we are now with the measures in place. If I could ask you. When we have an incident like this, we complete our review for we know all the facts and my staff and myself meet with the compliance director on site, we give them all the information and the facts and let them start to take action to correct this as soon as possible. They usually start to do some retraining on the tips, training and do disciplinary action with the employees and then start to put in additional steps to correct the problem. And I will have Kate continue with her section. Good morning. Good morning Kate. Nice to see everybody. So as Loretta mentioned in the notice, we did specify several recommendations and they can be broken down into four primary categories. The first being training, the second being internal controls. There were some recommendations around physical improvements and also we asked for specific information about discipline. And I will review what's been done by Encore and what they have agreed to do, pursuant to the information in the notice. First with respect to training, there have been additional training pieces put into place by Encore at this point. They're in the process of implementing additional training measures specifically mandatory monthly quizzes to test several levels of staff who are responsible for alcohol service or who may come into contact with patrons who are consuming alcohol. These include cocktail staff, front of house restaurant personnel, butlers, pit bosses and above level managers, slot supervisors, beverage managers and also restaurant managers. And in addition, Encore has taken the step of having your assistant director of beverage certified as a tips trainer. So tips for those of you who may not be familiar with that acronym is training and intervention procedures for servers of alcohol. This is a certification you can receive when you were someone in the service industry who serves alcohol. So Encore now has on site an assistant director who's actually a trainer for this program, allowing them to implement refreshers of tips for training without having to send parties off site necessarily. So that was a proactive step taken by Encore with regard to training. We also asked that in addition to this enhanced training that there be enhanced communication between the service staff and Encore has taken steps not only to make sure that service staff had been retrained on how to communicate when they're crossing over shifts or handing off shifts so that if someone is taking over service of the patron, they're speaking with the server who has provided perhaps alcohol to that patron prior earlier in the evening. And that pairs with the internal control in addition to servers making observations and communicating them to their fellow staff. It's important that pit bosses and floor managers are also aware in making significant observations about responsible service of alcohol and potential over service. And to that end, Encore has agreed to implement an internal control that would require pit bosses and floor managers to make hourly rounds of their areas of responsibility and to make observations not only of patrons who are consuming alcohol but to communicate with table games dealers as well. We realized that table games dealers in their position have a unique perspective on patrons and their consumption of alcohol. So we think that's a valuable perspective. So that internal control will be forthcoming. The third area identified in the notice was physical improvements that may help with responsible service of alcohol and monitoring of alcohol service. And there has been several physical improvements made and some in the future which Encore is undertaking at this point. So regarding physical improvements, there are now watch boards. These are in the form of white boards with markers at each service area that servers can note down the description and location of a patron and may have a particular concern about regarding over-service of alcohol. And this allows it to be communicated to other members of the service staff who are on their shift. In addition to this, which is a fairly basic method of communication, Encore is undertaking at this point to investigate how to digitize this communication so that it can happen more quickly and efficiently across service areas around the gaming floor. And the last area identified was discipline in review of the response to the notice, Encore has completed a thorough and appropriate disciplinary review across all three of these incidents. As Bruce Vann shared, this is something that it's done oftentimes prior to the issuance of a notice and Encore has shared the details of this disciplinary review with the IAB pursuant to the request made in the notice of non-compliance. That's a brief summary of the four areas of primary recommendation that were in the notice. And if there are questions, I'm happy to answer them and would also note that Jackie Chrome is on the call as well and she's been aware of this and communicating with the IAB in response to the notice. Thank you, Kate, thank you, Bruce. Questions? Good morning, Jackie. Questions for Kate on Loretta on this issue? I have one. Yes. You just laid out all three of you an extensive, what appears to be an extensive plan of actions to rectify this serious issue. In your opinions, did the licensee take these issues seriously enough and they're doing everything it sounds like to make sure something like this is not reoccurring but are the actions appropriate in your opinions? And it sounds like to me that they are but I'd like to hear from the experts. I don't think there's any question by any of us that's been involved in this matter that the licensee has been very responsive and has shares our view that this is not acceptable behavior and that considerable efforts have to be made to minimize any chance that this is a recurring thing. And the licensee knows its operation better than anybody and some of the measures were identified by them and were put into place well before the notice issued. One of the significant measures that I discussed at some length with groups was putting some responsibility through the internal control with the pit boss, the slot supervisors and the floor people which is a change and we think that that also will be an effective measure. But by all accounts, we think that there's been a comprehensive response, a responsible response from the licensee. Thank you. Commissioners, lean in or wave if you would like to. Sure. Madam Chair. Oh, Commissioner Stevens, thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Just a quick question, I guess for Loretta or Kate, correct me if I'm wrong, but the drink limitation is something that is somewhat unique when it comes to the issuance of an alcohol license and that we've spelled it out specifically that no more than three drinks in an hour, all of our licensees have agreed to that, that serve alcohol. Just confirming, is that the case? That's right. That is consistent across all three properties and essentially it's a part of the beverage license agreement which is tied to the gaming license. So that is the limit across all three licensees, yes. Okay, obviously, a couple of these instances kind of became disruptive instances on the gaming floor and it appears they were all addressed with licensee staff and GEU appropriately. I think it goes without saying that our licensees are still seriously committed to making sure that somebody who has perhaps been over-served and hopefully that case won't come up again because there are some impacts from this notice some non-compliance, but I think they're all committed to making sure that nobody ever leaves the property having been over-served and I think a couple of our licensees have made even rides or something available to make sure that people are getting home safely. In fact, they are over-served and do leave the property but I think a combination of this notice and non-compliance, all the steps that they've taken as well as what they've offered to do for their patron's safety, I think hopefully will be enough that we won't have too many of these incidents again. Right, and I do note that the last incident was the beginning of September and again, reporting to you now on it, but there has been some passage of time since this over-service issue. It hasn't repeated since the beginning of September. Loretta, though, just to clarify, and I wanna get to Commissioner Zuniga. I noted Commissioner Cameron set a plan of action, but again, after the good work of our gaming agents under the Leadership of Bruce Band and our GEU on the initial, back in August, measures were, corrective measures were immediately put in place. They just have been improved and enhanced over time and that plan of action continues and will be fully implemented given your investigation. Is that fair? Yes, that's well said. That's exactly accurate. Okay, all right, Commissioner Zuniga. Well, I was actually gonna ask precisely that question or along those lines. Also, thank the team at K. Loretta for the thorough report. It sounds like there's quite a bit of measures that are already in place and some that might evolve as you yourself alluded to whether digitizing some information or the licensee themselves, identifying additional measures in collaboration with Bruce's crew. So look forward to additional updates on this matter, but thank you for the report. Commissioner Browne. I just had one question, which when it comes to, Kate, you mentioned that there's gonna be some level of training or increased training for the table games dealers in terms of identifying, over-serving. When I was hearing about this in more detail recently, Bruce Bann pointed out there is a rotation schedule for the table dealers and so they're not, it's not static. They're not stationary necessarily seeing this person become more inebriated as the night goes on. Is part of the training going to be sort of as the table gets passed off to the next dealer? If there's anybody they think is on the cusp where they've noted anything, does that then get conveyed to the next dealer? So table games dealers weren't one of the categories specifically identified in the response as subject to the mandatory monthly quizzes about responsible alcohol service. The table game dealer interaction came more in line with having the internal control reflect pit bosses and floor managers to make hourly rounds. We want them specifically to interact with the table game dealers because the cocktail servers are moving to multiple patrons and in multiple areas of the floor. The table game dealers rotate with perhaps less frequency and will have a more consistent interaction with the group of people at their table. So we've wanted the pit bosses and floor managers to take advantage of that perspective in addition to what they may get from the watch boards and from specific cocktail server staff. So apologies if that was unclear. No, no, that clears it up. But I guess my question is still out there which is as part of that, should there also be efforts made that when the pit bosses are checking in, if they say, look, I'm watching, you know, player seven at that table that that gets conveyed to the dealer that comes in? Certainly. And I think apologies. I think that is the general spirit of trying to enhance communication in the shift handoff between the service staff and any personnel who are on the gaming floor and these watch boards, as I said, are, you know, an initial effort. And certainly, Encore has identified some more efficient ways to make sure that information is communicated more broadly across all areas of the gaming floor. I was just going to ask you. Everything going on at the table gets passed off when people relieve each other from a patron's play to anything else going on, if the patron's problematic or anything. So that would get passed off when they make a switch. Great, thank you. You're welcome. And just so that I'm clear, Bruce, is that memorialized in the internal controls? I will make sure it is because that has not been submitted yet at this point. Okay, thank you. Are there any other comments or questions? I just want to first say that I was very pleased to hear about the vigilance of our eyes at the casino floor that are through the eyes of our gaming agents as well as our GEU. They intercepted this activity and they did make recommendations and worked with the licensees to put in place important measures at that time. I want to thank the investigative team under first really it was a crossover under Karen and then Loretta and with a good work of Kate to be thorough. Loretta noted the dates of these matters. We always want to be cognizant of timing. I also want to be cognizant of the fact that this is a significant notice for our licensees that must be taken with care because it is significant to their record. And so today marks a serious note for Encore and I am looking forward to being able to have reports from IEB about how these measures have been implemented, enhanced and then tested. So I'm sure that we will get follow-up reports in the future. I also am quite confident because I have confidence in the folks at Encore that they will take this notice today with the very seriousness that all of our team has taken it. So I think that the test buys ahead to make sure that all these measures work. Of course, not only are we always concerned about this but not only for the patron safety but as Commissioner Stebbins alluded, a patron who somehow inadvertently gets behind a steering wheel. Complicated, of course, that the stakes are too high for non-compliance with the COVID-19 measures. And so this is an extremely important conversation to have today for us to really hear the full compliment of measures being taken with respect to over-serving I thank you Loretta and team for today's thorough report. I don't want to put you Jackie on the spot but you are here and of course, if you would like to chime in Loretta, does this is the proper time for Jackie to chime in or would you prefer? No, I think this is perfect. Okay, Jackie again. So thank you, Commissioner Chair.   So it's something that we are watching. I think with any incident you learn and you grow and I think that's what happened here, what we've realized is that we need to increase communication primarily between our gaming departments and our beverage departments. That's what we're trying to put in place now to really add another layer of protection. Thank you. Commissioner, is any further comments, questions on this matter? I know Loretta you have a third item, I believe. I do, so shall I jump right into that chair? Sure. Okay, so the other matter arose on the night of Sunday, December 6th at Mystique, a restaurant located at Encore. Mystique is operated by the Big Night Entertainment Group as a vendor licensed by the Commission to conduct the business with the casino. And Mystique has been authorized to operate as a restaurant under the state's restaurant guidelines. So on the night in question, Sunday the 6th, there was larger than usual attendance at the restaurant and restaurant management explained that this was due to a late afternoon Patriots game and what management termed and industry night for professionals in the hospitality industry. And that type of event, which was on that night largely reservations-based was authorized under the restaurant guidelines. The IEB did a comprehensive review of the surveillance footage of the evening and of course we are familiar firsthand with the layout of the restaurant itself. And I mentioned the layout because the configuration of the restaurant I think comes into play in some of the issues that they had on the night in question. So there is a dining room in the restaurant with typical dining tables, but the area in question has a bar which this bar had appropriate plexiglass separations and bars are allowed under the state guidelines so long as prepared food is served. This part of the restaurant also has a long narrow high top table with bar height chairs at it that is located directly behind the guests who are seated at the restaurant's main bar. What unfolded here is the evening progressed is that the setting looked less like a typical dining sit down restaurant setting and more like an informal gathering. Some guests did not remain seated at their dining spot and rather they walked around the area socializing with other guests who were seated at these two bars. Some guests were unmasked and walking around with their beverages. Some unmasked guests were walking right up to servers and not maintaining the six foot distance. The passageway between these two bars that I described was a narrow area and on that night it was a high traffic area and they did not maintain a single direction flow of traffic in that area that night. So there was not strict adherence to the mass requirements and there was not strict adherence to the six foot distancing requirements. In the continuum of behaviors this was not a wild overcrowded party. In fact, it was not a matter of being over capacity or having an over capacity crowd. It was people walking around unmasked visiting with one another in close contact with one another and with staff in more of what you describe as an informal social gathering setting. Now it is worth noting what the restaurant did that night. They recognized that this was not an ideal situation and they closed the restaurant early. The lights went on at around 8.30 and the last guests were leaving by 9.10. As of Monday of this week, the 14th management on its own volition closed the restaurant until further notice expected sometime in 2021. The decision by management to close on their own really makes moved any corrective action that the IEB would otherwise have taken. It was a responsible measure that they took at this difficult time. So the management also, I should note they were very cooperative with both GEU and the gaming agents. They made their management teams available to us and assisted in making the surveillance footage available efficiently and thoroughly. And again, I thought it was important to report this activity to you. It's not the type of activity that we have been seeing or that can be tolerated. Given the actions that were taken, which I think were responsible actions, the only thing that the IEB would expect with the eventual reopening of Mystique is that the reopening be subject to the IEB review and approval, give the IEB the opportunity to assess any health measures that are still required at the time of reopening, especially around the configuration issues. So those are my prepared remarks on Mystique. And I know we have folks on this call, myself and others who can try to answer any questions that you might have. Commissioner Loretta. Commissioner O'Brien. My question is more, you've made comments about how the configuration and maybe the high-top table versus regular tables or booths may have contributed to this. I'm assuming, but just want to make sure that's been conveyed to Big Night Entertainment in terms of coming back to IEB in 2021 potentially to reopen to make sure those concerns are part of what's addressed.  Absolutely. Commissioner, Loretta, though, in terms of that, they, the arrangement that they had was in compliance with the state guidelines. It's just, I think, in this case, would you say the fact that many of these individuals knew each other, so the interaction maybe provided by a high-top, the ease of getting off from a high-top stool was because they knew each other. We hadn't had any reports on that activity happening prior to that night, correct? That's right, and that may be a factor that attendance was higher on that night and that the folks there did know one another as opposed to, you know, separate parties coming in. I do have some question about that narrow area between the two bars. It appears that the tables themselves, edge-to-edge, may be six feet apart, but when you have the chairs and the way the chairs are utilized at the bars, you have a less-than-ideal situation there regardless. So I think we'd want to take a closer look at that. Thanks for the clarification. It was a follow-up question for Commissioner O'Brien. Commissioner O'Brien, did you have another question or comment? No, but other than to say that given your comment again, that this may be technically in compliance, the fact that the reality on the ground is leading to some concerns, it may be as the spring unfolds and we have, you know, not normal, but getting close, you have more attendance and I'd like to see it fixed, flow-wise, structural-wise, et cetera, so that we're eliminating what we've seen as a potential problem. Absolutely. Thank you. Follow-up question as well. It sounds like the staff in this particular restaurant is not as vigilant as the staff in the casino with regard to encouraging or mandating the masks worn properly and the distancing. So it would seem to me that additional training to that staff may be in order before they reopen as well so that they understand that they need to be really vigilant with those compliance measures. You know, that's a good point, Commissioner, because we have felt that on the casino floor that employees at all levels, it's been a talk-to-bottom approach and that employees at all levels have been made to feel empowered to, you know, do their part to see that these measures are enforced. So, you know, that is a good point about the restaurant employees as well. Commissioner Zunica? Commissioner Stebbins? Okay, he's outside. Commissioner Stebbins, are you outside? Oh, you know, just to say I appreciate GEU and the IEB's work on this, you know, certainly Commissioner Cameron makes a good recommendation about making sure that that operator's staff are brought up to speed with what they should feel free to be able to do in talking with patrons. You know, overall, it's just disappointing the behavior of these patrons has, you know, led to this decision to shut down the restaurant in 2021 and in fact, the livelihood of all their employees. And, you know, that's disappointing. But I have to compliment them on seeing that the event was getting out of hand and that they tried to take appropriate actions and do it quickly to close the restaurant and move everybody out. Can I also just point a clarification, though, I'm about to excuse me. Again, I think I heard you clearly, but I just want to reiterate that this decision to close one, I do applaud them for recognizing and closing early to Commissioner Stevan's point, but they've also decided to close all together and as Commissioner Stevan points out, that does mean it affects the livelihood of those who were working there. But it was their decision to take that step. At this point in time, you might have had corrective actions in mind, but you had not in any way delivered a message to this vendor that closure was going to be required or recommended. So absolutely not. The decision was theirs. We were really still in a, you know, fact-finding mode when they informed us about this. It came, the formal notification came on Monday, but I think they had notified GEU and Bruce even earlier than Monday that they were thinking about that. So they did that on their own.   And, you know, this was a decision that they came to on their own. We didn't request and we never talked to them about measures or signals that there would be any kind of mandated closing at all. Anything further? Extensive report, excellent thorough investigations and again, with all the right considerations in mind at this very challenging time. So, yes. Thank you, Chair. And, you know, again, we in the IEB know that we're still in a very critical period in this pandemic. There's light at the end of the tunnel, but not a time to let our guard down now. So thank you. That's so well put, Loretta. Thank you. All right. Then I believe Director Wells in my right that we can move on to item number four, or do you have anything to close with? That is correct. Go ahead hit the item number four, Madam Chair. Okay. Well, we are shifting gears to some historic import. It's hard to believe it's historic because it wasn't that long ago, correct. But we will now hear from Director Mark VanderLinden researching responsible gaming on Encore's construction report. I've been looking forward to this, Mark. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, missionaries. Good morning. I, too, have been really looking forward to this. I'm joined by Dr. Rachel Volberg, who is the principal investigator on this project, as well as Rod Metammity, who is a senior research manager at the UMass Donahue Institute. Before I turn it over to them, I just wanted to say a few words. The Expanded Gaming Act directs the MGC to develop an annual research agenda in order to understand the social and economic effects of casino gambling and the Commonwealth. The Commission selected the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences and the UMass Donahue Institute to carry out key aspects of this research agenda. Together, they form the SIGMA project or the social and economic impacts of gaming in Massachusetts. Since 2013, our partnership with these two highly respected institutions has produced over 40 reports and publications and provided residents of Massachusetts with a first of its kind gambling oversight system that provides neutral information on decision making, early warning signs of changes connected to gambling and the Commonwealth, and information to inform the services to prevent and mitigate gambling-related harm. The present report on the construction of Encore Boston Harbor adds to this body of research and contributes greatly to our understanding of the economic impacts of the casino industry in Massachusetts. The study that you're about to hear about provides detail to the $1.6 billion of direct costs associated with building the casino. It measures the economic ripple effect across the state and reports on key aspects of the construction workforce. So why is it important? The Expanded Gaming Act was passed in large part to stimulate job growth and benefit the local and state economy. Rod Metamedy will provide in detail and describe the success of this project in accomplishing those two goals. I will turn it over to him in just a second. Before I do so, I wanted to just do a call out to the individuals that without their participation in collaboration, this simply would not be possible, including Suffolk Construction who provided an enormous amount of collaboration and providing the data to our research team. Our research review committee, who we always have at least a couple rounds of feedback on the report before we're satisfied that it is final and not least of which is Encore Boston Harbor and specifically Jackie Crum who is joining us today. Their collaboration on making sure that the data is complete and accurate is really important. And actually following Rod's presentation, I hope Jackie will also say a few words just about the construction for perspective on this is pretty in depth. So with that, I will turn it over to you, Rachel and Rod. You can, if you want to unmute yourself. Yep. Can everyone hear me? Great. Yes. Madam Chair, commissioners, I hope you'll indulge me for just a couple of minutes to say farewell to Bruce Stevens. I first met Bruce in 2012 when our UMass based Amherst based team began exploring the possibility of competing for this project that we were successful in getting and began in 2013. But I think the real way that Bruce managed to get into my mind this morning was that in every subsequent meeting where we presented after that first meeting in 2012, Bruce never failed to remind me how thoroughly we terrified him with our knowledge of Section 71 of the Expanded Gaming Act. So Bruce, it's been such a pleasure working with you and I hope you'll come back to Western Massachusetts and visit us frequently. And I know that the Cannabis Control Commission is looking forward to you, not least of whom is probably Julie Johnson who is their director of research. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel.  It's been an incredible opportunity. So thank you. Thank you. So the presentation we have today focuses on the economic impacts of the construction of Encore Boston Harbor. And as Mark has already indicated, Section 71 of the Expanded Gaming Act ensured that these impacts of the construction of the new casinos in Massachusetts could be identified. And I just want to emphasize the uniqueness of that particular section of the Expanded Gaming Act which is truly a unique and one of a kind in the United States. So the report that you'll be hearing today is the final one of three that our economic team from the UMass Donahue Institute has completed to help understand the spending, employment, and economic impacts of the construction phase of the casino industry in Massachusetts. Going forward, we will be turning our focus to fully understanding the operational impacts of the casino industry in the Commonwealth as well as assessing the impacts of COVID-19 on the casino industry. So I just wanted to make just a few brief remarks and I'm going to turn it now over to Rod Motammity who will be presenting the report this morning. Rod? Morning, everyone. I'm going to do the screen share now. Morning. So let's see here. Okay. Can everyone see the slide correctly? I have two monitors so I'm never quite sure what screen you're seeing. So... We're seeing the slides. Okay. Not the notes. Not the notes. Right. All right. All right. So thank you, everyone. I'd like to thank again the commission and Director VanderLinden for inviting us to present today. As you've heard, over the past many years, the people of Massachusetts have heard much about the potential arms and benefits of expanding gaming and the business of doing so. We on the Sigma team are honored to have been able to study so many aspects of this project over these years, some of which more controversial than others, but I think today is perhaps one of the least controversial aspects of the game expansion, which is the construction. I think it's clear that spending hundreds of millions, or in this case, a couple billion dollars, to build something new will undoubtedly create income and employment for many. That was known prior to the fact. Our objective with this study is to put a finer point on where and to whom these benefits accrue. So before I really get into the results of the study, there are a few details that I want to cover. The first is to clarify what exactly it is that we study. We didn't evaluate the full investment, the 2.1 billion dollars, but rather the 1.6 billion dollars of that. Total investment includes things like, if you see those license application fees, the land purchases, pre-opening expenses, and perhaps most notably furniture fixtures and equipment, which are basically the things that one would see filling the space, the gaming machines, the tables, TVs, couches, beds and bedding, pots and pans, etc., etc. We didn't include those things because typically they are purchased on contract from out-of-state vendors and thus don't typically create direct impacts in Massachusetts. However, insofar as local businesses will clean, maintain, repair or replenish any of those supplies, we'll capture that in our operations reports that are forthcoming. The next two points are housekeeping. Director VanderLinden already mentioned the fact that Suffolk Construction Company was our data provider. As their role as the construction manager for the project, they oversaw all the contractors and subcontractors and payments and so forth. So we worked with them, obviously with the guidance and encouragement of Jackie and her colleagues at Encore. I would like to take a moment in my admittedly limited time to single out Emily Earle at Suffolk, who helps me with data collection there. She was my main contact. She was nothing but helpful through both the birth of her first child and all the COVID disruptions. So with all of the power of Section 71, with all of the regulatory authority of the NGC to compel action on behalf of the licensees, at the end of the day the success of the SEMA project comes down to individuals making a choice to stand up and be helpful. And so I want to acknowledge Emily and others for making that choice and being helpful to us. And lastly, just again another housekeeping point, our data was current at the time of data delivery. As a result, it's a snapshot in time. The data came to us after the conclusion of the construction project. So we don't expect any major changes. But even with MGM, we saw that there were some small modifications as things were audited and so on after the data came to us. In that case, it was low single-digit percentages and so they made no material impact on our findings and we don't expect there to be any difference in this case. So I shall not bury the lead any more than I already have. Here are the things that I believe are the key findings of our report. I'll expand on each of these points as I go through my presentation but I want to highlight them here so we can come. The first is that most of the construction spending stayed in Massachusetts and most of the spending in Massachusetts went to companies in the Metro Boston area. The area was also home to most of the construction workers. Next, 13% of the contracts by value went to companies that met at least one of the diversity criteria of being either a woman minority or veteran home business enterprise. And the data suggests that the construction workforce that was used was representative of the state's construction workforce in terms of race, gender, and veteran stats. And lastly, after accounting for the ripple effects that Director Vander Linden alluded to of economic impacts as they move around through the economy and leakages out of the economy through imports, commuting, and so on, we found that the $1.6 billion of construction spending created $2.6 billion of total economic activity and the related income and jobs that would be needed to produce that economic activity. So as I said, we'll go through all of this in a bit more detail but I think that's where the key findings are. A key driver of the geographic distribution of the contracts and the workers and thus as a result the impacts of the economic impacts is just the location of Angkor-Bossenhardt. So located where it is off of Route 99 in Everett right across the river from what seems to me the ever-expanding Assembly Row area of Somerville. One would expect that given where it's located the economic impacts would be proximate to the construction site. And we saw that with the construction study of Clanwich Park Casino and MGM Springfield where the economic benefits grow with proximate to construction site. So this map further illustrates the distribution of contracts around the state. Note that businesses in five counties didn't receive any contracts of Franklin County, Berkshire County and the three counties of the Cape and Islands. So of the $1.6 billion in construction spending $1.1 billion stayed in Massachusetts. That's a of the total 1.6, 27% went to Suffolk County, 15% to Middlesex and then Norfolk and Plymouth excuse me Plymouth make up most of the rest. At a smaller more disaggregated level 28% of all Massachusetts-based spending went to the host and surrounding communities. So that's roughly $447 million. Almost 90% of that amount went to Boston went to businesses in Boston. But that isn't as out of whack perhaps as it would originally seem. A lot of that is due to the fact that Suffolk Construction Company is located in Boston. And as the prime contractor and construction manager for a $1.6 billion construction project one would imagine that a lot of money would cycle through there. So if you remove the effects of Suffolk it's really more like a hundred something million dollars went to Boston. And after that ever it was the next highest with 32 million dollars. So roughly 75% of the construction spending was awarded to companies in Massachusetts but the remaining quarter did go out of state. The vast majority of the money that left Massachusetts remained within United States only 4% of the total construction spending with the 4% of the project for the size is like $70 million. There was 36 other states in addition to Massachusetts that received some construction spending some contracts though it's proportionally pretty small. Rhode Island was the next highest state after Massachusetts though it only had roughly $96 million with the contracts which is only 4% of what Massachusetts received. Beyond that Connecticut and New York are the only other states that received over $50 million with the contracts. So you take the top four Massachusetts Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York that's 85% of contract value is just in those four neighboring nearby states. So again the rest of those you know states that you see there while there are contracts there they are proportionally rather small to the size of it. We also looked at the destination of the spending the companies buy their diversity or location criteria. Again this is of the ownership we'll get to the workers in a little bit. What we found was that 20% roughly or $355 million of contracts by value went to companies that met the global criteria and together 13% went to companies that met at least one of the diversity criteria that's a $208 million in total. For those of you who are interested in doing some quick arithmetic every 1% is $16 million. So that's 1% to the VBEs at $60 million 2% is $32 million and so on. But it's a 13% total of $208 million for the companies that again that met at least one of the diversity criteria. And my recollection is that this is pretty in line with and perhaps better than on course as stated goals. So now taking a shift to talk about the workers we talked about something the stuff on the business side now we're going to take a look at the worker side. What we estimated from our calculations is that roughly 6,700 individuals likely cycled through the sites at some point over the construction time. Again it could have been for an hour it could have been for months but at some point cycled through the site. And these individuals sorry was someone and I just want to make sure that you we hear you clearly when you lean into the microphone and it just occasionally I'm using a headset I think it's moving around let me try that but we are hearing almost like 99% of what you're saying but every word matters so thank you sure let me see if I can fix this microphone and they use the mock turtle collar here to see if I can nail down the microphone a bit better is this better? Okay Where was I? Oh yeah 5.2 million hours so we think the so the data suggests that that's about the total number of hours worked which is considerable. Due to the nature of construction we didn't expect the average hours worked per worker to be super high the way the trades work is you cycle on and off the site as needs dictate right the electricians don't come on until there's a building envelope for them to work in the plumbers don't come on or the finished carpenters don't come on until they're needed and they cycle off on the finish average hours worked was about 760 hours per worker which is 1940 hour weeks so just under five months that was about the average if you take those hours and you convert them to full-time equivalents so you divide them by 2,080 hours that works out to 2,500 FTD so that's what we thought total compensation for workers on this project was just under 250 million dollars I'd like to note that compensation differs from wages in that it includes the value of benefits the average worker received about 36,500 dollars in compensation on this project for an average hourly rate of 47 dollars and 89 cents to give you some context the national average compensation rate for a construction worker is 35 dollars and 83 cents so about 12 dollars less however we know that Massachusetts living costs are higher and thus wages tend to be a bit higher so I searched for state-level average compensation by industry that data isn't readily available but I was able to find average wage data by industry which suggests that Massachusetts construction workers earn a 30% higher wage than the national average so if you scale up national comp by 30% you get 46 dollars and 58 cents which is a couple of dollars lower than what we see here so this isn't an exact outcome but at the very least it suggests that these workers were paid again at different levels again at the very least in line with state norms if not a little bit if not a little bit more we found that workers residing in Everett and the surrounding communities earned slightly lower average hourly compensation rates than the average for all workers this finding aligns with what we saw for the host communities as well in MGM Springfield and the PPC construction projects and given how different these places are from each other the labor sheds their local economies and so forth we think the most likely explanation for this compensation rate observation is that the labor for the most common trades things like iron workers electricians pipe fitters etc can be found locally while the only reason you would bring a worker from farther away was because they possess specialized knowledge or skills that couldn't be procured locally and thus those folks would justify higher pay so because we saw this same kind of ringed outcome in both the you know in Plainville and Springfield and Everett we don't think it's a community specific thing we think it's more of a structure of where you would source workers from for these projects and again the most you know common trades and skills you can find locally and you have to look further field for more specialized trades and thus pay people more so within the Commonwealth as we mentioned early in the presentation half of the workers resided either Middlesex or Suffolk counties after those two counties you see the workers are spread relatively evenly across eastern Massachusetts and then they drop off pretty quickly as you gain more distance of the roughly 3300 workers who reside in Middlesex and Suffolk counties most live in the host and surrounding communities so 62% of those or roughly 2000 lived in the host and surrounding communities of roughly 327 workers our estimates suggest resided in Everett itself so I want to talk a little bit about the race and ethnicity of the construction workers used on the Encore Boston Harbor project versus their sort of comparison groups and I want to take a little extra minute to walk through this because the findings here are a little bit more nuanced than they are elsewhere in the report and this it kind of boils down to the data we had and the data we didn't have so there are some things we can say with high confidence and that is taken as a whole the workers used for the Encore Boston Harbor construction project are representative of construction workers as a whole in Massachusetts in terms of gender race and ethnicity as I said in the beginning so for sorry and veteran status so for gender and veteran status it's right on the money seven percent of Massachusetts construction workers are women and seven percent of all hours on this project were done by women seven percent of construction or sorry six percent are veterans and six percent on this project were veterans the data actually suggests that the construction workers on this project were actually more diverse than construction workers as a whole for the state we found that the workers on this project were 61 percent white whereas 75 percent of workers in construction occupations for the state are white so a more diverse group where we have low confidence in our findings is comparing the workers on the project who are from Everett to people from Everett who are in construction occupations generally and that's where the data limitations really came into play so the publicly available data for occupation by race by town has very high margins of error somewhere in the vicinity of 20 to 25 percent and so with margins that big it's hard to make any claim definitively because at the lower end or the upper end of those error bounds you could get widely different sort of conclusions if you take the census data at its face it says that 60 percent of people who live in Everett who are in a construction occupation are white the data for this project shows that 54 percent of the workers were white so again if you take the census data at a state's value the workers on this project were actually more diverse than their peer cohorts however I have provided the Everett's working age population as just a context we don't expect the working age population to be representative of the mix of any particular any particular occupation but what we see here is that Everett is a white minority city and at the very least the data suggests that the construction occupations are not representative at least in terms of race and ethnicity of the population as a whole so the occupation as a whole construction occupations as a whole or is not represented of the city as a whole so there is some work to do there and those occupations and again as best we can tell the data seem to suggest that the workers from Everett were at least representative of those in construction occupations but it's inconclusive I do want to point out to switch back to our high confidence things about the broad representativeness of the group of a project this size you might think seven percent female participation six percent veteran participation you know 39 percent minority participation those sound low although they are representative but again of a project this size we're talking 391,000 hours of work for women almost 298,000 hours of work for veterans and almost 1.4 million hours of work for minorities so when a project has 5.2 million hours of work six or seven percent is a lot of work so it is worth applauding at least those opportunities and one last thing I would point out on this topic before we switch gears is to the commissioners in your evaluation of this report when you get to this section if you feel that it requires more context or explanation please let us know so switching gears now to the economic impact analysis we've talked about how money flowed to businesses how workers were hired and where they were and now we're going to switch gears and figure out how that all ripples out through the economy we've said to you in these presentations before that we use a model from a company called Regional Economic Models Incorporated that's based in Ambrose, Massachusetts we think they make a model that has a lot of advantages for us for this project we have divided it up into the six regions you see here we chose these six regions for two reasons one is that they aggregate up to the three gaming regions which obviously is useful and two they represent existing commuting and economic linkages in the state so those are the regions that you're going to see results for in this presentation and in the accompanying report so here you see the employment impacts so after doing our economic modeling we found that statewide the construction of Encore, Boston Harbor created or supported an average of 2,500 jobs per year which peaked at roughly 3,350 jobs in 27 interestingly that was also the peak year of construction employment impacts for the NGM Springfield construction project as well so clearly that was a good year to be a construction worker in Massachusetts I think we've talked about what direct indirect and induced mean before but by way of refresher direct is the things that are quite literally directly attached or attributable to the project so you don't have construction workers themselves indirect is the business to business chain the vendor to vendor construction project buys some concrete the concrete vendor then needs to buy some cement and some trucks the truck vendor then needs to buy some steel etc that's the indirect chain the induced chain is largely consumption but it also includes investment in government spending but it's mostly I am now employed I have a paycheck I go by childcare services or a restaurant meal those businesses then pay their own employees who then make their own purchases and so forth what you'll see I think of notes here is that the indirect jobs are proportionally pretty small compared to the others and the reason for that is in a construction project in a state like Massachusetts the supply chain very quickly leads the state we don't make cement we don't make rebar we don't make wires we don't make you know windows and doors we don't you know and so all of that stuff that you need for construction projects largely going to be imported and so that's indirect business to business supply chain very quickly exits the state and thus the impacts disappear for Massachusetts of the total jobs roughly two-thirds were in construction and then the next four in the top five are healthcare and social assistance retail trade state and local government and accommodation and food services so basically the next four are essentially things that are supported by consumption more people have jobs the paychecks get spent and it goes to largely consumption based goods with the exception of state and local government which just tends to fluctuate with general economic activity next we're going to talk about the dollar impacts so here we have total economic activity otherwise known as output or revenues or business sales and then we have net new economic activity also known as value added or gross product I'll get into the next slide about how these things differ from each other but for the purposes of this one I just wanted to reiterate a couple things here again we can see the ramifications of the geographical distribution of contracts and workers because those things are concentrated in Metro Boston due to the location of the casino the impacts tend to be concentrated there as well Metro Boston is further aided by the fact that it's the economic hub of the state so transactions or economic activity that happens anywhere a small piece of that might cycle through Metro Boston anyway so it's sort of further aided in that way the annual average column will give you a good sense of what to expect or what the impacts were in a typical year whereas the cumulative column shows the economic activity over the five-year analysis period so in my last slide I just want to walk the audience through what is total economic activity what isn't that new economic activity how do we get from one to the other so I'm just going to walk through this from left to right so we start with 1.6 billion dollars of constructions right off the bat we lose half a billion because that leaves the state to buy things from elsewhere so we start with 1.1 billion dollars in state through those direct and indirect effects that we just talked about through supply chains through consumer effects and so forth we get an additional roughly 1.5 billion dollars of economic activity we wind up at 2.6 billion dollars however in order to produce that 2.6 billion dollars we need to use up other things nothing is made from nothing so for example to make a car you use up steel you use up plastic you use up wiring you use up legal services you use up marketing services it's not accurate to say what is the total value of things that this economy created if you count both the car and the steel because the car is sold at such a price that includes the value of everything that went into it so in that same logic to say oh we're going to count all of the things that were used up and producing all this economic activity and count all the new economic activity we're essentially counting things twice so what to get from total to net we subtract the things that were consumed in production so that's roughly a billion dollars worth of things and that's how we get to 1.6 billion dollars of net new economic activity or 1.6 billion dollars of gross state product or value added or whichever term you're more familiar with they're all the same and so that's it as a final point I'd just like to draw the audience's attention to the bottom link on this slide there you'll be able to find the report accompanying this presentation shortly after this meeting ends and you'll also be able to find any other reports that this beyond that I'm happy to stay on would would you mind pulling your power point down so that we can restore our ability to see each other's faces please thank you so that's um very comprehensive and exciting where do we begin commissioners with questions observations it's very exciting Commissioner Zuniga yeah thank you thank you um my name's Sharon and thank you um Ron and Rachel for the for the great overview I have two um two perhaps comments one one question and a comment I know this was not part of the analysis Rod but there was a close to another billion dollars being in costs that was part of the initial investment some of which was for regulatory costs that supports frankly some of our jobs and and the licensing fee goes to the state coffers that also supports a number of things we'd be fair and I know this not part of this analysis uh necessarily but we'd be fair to say that some of it might mirror some of the same uh trends that you outline a relative to the direct cost in terms of use as well as where they went meaning that you know the locality sure um I can provide a little bit of context for that I'll start with one thing you actually didn't ask me about and that's land acquisition costs we exclude those from economic impact analyses essentially as a practice because a transfer of an assets is not an economic impact right so if I buy a stock share from you all I've done is just moved a thing back and forth that doesn't induce new economic activity again land acquisition we treat the same way for economic impact models so that being excluded the rest of it yeah in fact especially things that went to regulatory costs and so forth the government services tend to be labor it tends to be the acquisition of labor and the provision of services that are provided by individuals so the employment return on money that goes to fund government services tends to be very high so you would see a pretty significant employment return on those those things which is actually what we saw in the operating impact study we differ language park casino we actually found that the share of their tax revenue that goes to local aid and thus into local government spending actually creates larger economic impacts than the casino's own contained economic activity so that is a reaction that we would see there in terms of the other procurement yes it would create these same economic induced and indirect effects but just likely in other states so where are those so Nevada for example that manufactures most of the gaming devices in the country there's going to be a lot of indirect and induced activity generated there by buying you know thousands of slot machines and so forth but a lot of those tend to leave the state because we just don't manufacture those things here was that about what you're going for commissions in here yeah yeah thank you that's that's a great context and a good reminder about the land acquisition costs then the other thing that I would just like to comment on is something that struck me as you were going through the presentation and that is on the finding about a representative aspect of the population in terms of minority women and veteran status that is in line with with what you know the state has but I would just note and I think it should be noted that that came through a lot of hard work it was it didn't happen by chance there was a lot of efforts by many here but we're also you know jail and commissioner Stevens and many others as well as a lot of stakeholders in these acts as an opportunity committee to try to always ensure that those those results endure it so thank you for for noting it I just wanted to emphasize the work that you took I'm not not the least of which also the licensee Suffolk and and everybody at Angkor it's it just took a lot of you know hard work commissioner Cameron yes thank you by a follow-up question to commissioner Zuniga's question I intended to to ask about the seven percent seven percent in particular with women because again we know how hard that build the life that work campaign I mean all of that was it was as commissioner just pointed out such hard work and such a such an accomplishment but then the number of the overall state number which is seven percent was that after that campaign so those numbers were in fact higher as well is not just the numbers on this particular project the numbers I think are a five-year average ending in I want to say 2018 maybe so I think it would perhaps catch some of the those efforts but not all of them okay so I guess I was surprised that the numbers were the same seven percent for this particular project and seven percent statewide unless there are other parts of the state that happen to have a higher percentage of women working I'm just that we're not aware of or we've never been I think part of it is also a definitional thing that's sort of unavoidable on our part the construction occupations is a lot of stuff right it's not necessarily women in the trades I see you know so women in the trades could very well be much lower but we don't have access to data that's as you know how many female bricklayers are there how many female masons are there you know so construction occupations could be supervisors it could be some equipment operators it could be many of other things so I do want to separate those two things because I think what we might actually be talking about slightly different things I think these efforts that have bore a lot of success was more about you know women in trades more broadly than women in construction occupations which is the best comparison that we could get data for okay thank you for that before we continue I do want to invite Jackie Crum Vice President John Counsel at all for to speak I know that you partnered very closely with Director Griffin and her team and Suffolk to achieve so much of these accomplishments that we've heard in detail today so we'd love to hear from you thank you Madam Chair so I was just reflecting that seven years ago today I was frantically working to complete the RFA2 application and I was laughing when I was hearing this presentation because at the time the RF, our project was 1.6 billion all in as we all know that didn't work out so well for us but anyway a large part of that application was obviously focused on the impacts of construction and Commissioner Stevrens if I recall correctly you were responsible for the economic development section and I believe you gave us three out of four in the overall well done categories so we appreciate that we have very strong opinions on the matter but I understood that research and facts were needed to back up those opinions to that end we engaged two separate consultants to analyze data and to provide us projections and it very quickly became apparent to us that while there are lots of studies on discrete aspects of casino construction projects there was no comprehensive study that the legislature and the commission had the foresight to commission a study of this breadth is a huge benefit for the industry now we now have a roadmap for future projects and something to back up our opinions I'd also like to thank our construction partner Suffolk Construction and our construction team led by Peter Campo who's staying on top of this on a daily basis working with Jill working with the commission it really was an all hands on board achievement and last but not least I'd like to thank the Sigma team Rod and Rachel I know it was an extraordinary effort to put this to distill all this information and it was a vast amount of data into such a comprehensive and digestible report so thank you for that and if I may may I say something very brief to commissioners Stevens you may and you don't even have to be so free thank you so first of all congratulations commissioners Stevens I can't believe it's been over seven years we will certainly miss your thoughtful deliberation always probing us to do better and your consistent support over all this time but I do have a question for you does this mean that you're finally able to come to Uncle Boston Harbor and enjoy our facilities commissioners Zunagos shaking his head yes I'll look for legal counsel they give me a full opinion counsel push the chime in you can go we just can't take free stuff no free stuff okay well congratulations it's been an absolute pleasure to work with you and I speak on behalf of our entire team it's been a wonderful experience you've had you've touched every part of our projects and we couldn't have been more appreciative of your support thank you thank you Jackie it goes without saying I've been humbled and privileged to have had the opportunity to work with you and Jenny and Bob and so many others over at Uncle Boston Harbor and I remain amazed to what you were able to do with a property that had been long forgotten and ignored and kind of left to its own devices so thank you for I know the dramatic impact you've had on the city ever in the immediate surrounding area Madam Chair I got a couple of just quick questions for Rod if I can absolutely thank you Rod first of all thanks to you and your team the breakdown of what the impact meant county by county I think was extensive data and hopefully reassures the residents of those counties that you know the introduction to gaming was a good thing that had many positive impacts and also to thank Emily and the team at Suffolk for helping you out as well as our own team and just to reiterate what Commissioner Zunagas said the great work by Jill Griffin the access and opportunity committee that she pulled together in the great input that we had from our licensees in that process what process was extensive just a quick question some of the money that you know four percent of the project costs though not extensive was apparently spent overseas and I just and you might be able to help me confirm this or Jackie that some of those were really unique construction items that have given us the construction project that we have today you know perved escalators and some other you know really high in each items that just cannot be found or constructed by companies here in the United States or just to give an explanation of where that kind of offshore money was spent would be I don't know whether you have that or Jackie might want to have a chance to weigh in as well I don't I would have that knowledge in a spreadsheet but not in my brain at the moment so if Jackie has you know greater insight onto that deferred to her so you're correct so some of that was just sort of the unique items the chandeliers the curved escalators two sets of curved escalators yes money to replace the one that got flooded but yes so it really was I think as part of our design process what we what we did was we we try to obtain unique items to put in there in the property throughout the property so some of the artwork did come from overseas as well that would make it a large portion of it thank you I'll just add to that that unrelated to this project in the case of PPC we had we found a lot of imports from Canada and in that case it was all structural steel that they needed for their building I guess it was the easiest and closest place to obtain what they needed and we did that so this is a different beast entirely okay and I think I know the answer to this already Rod but I'm assuming the extensive cleanup costs that were part of the construction project were included in the overall numbers that you pulled together that's my understanding that's a good point and that was about how many million 70 70 million yeah and that was included okay which is of course just a significant environmental investment any other particular questions I have a couple one's pretty nuanced Rod it's methodology only because you pointed it out and I thought it was interesting that you were able to extrapolate the impact of Suffolk being a Boston located company and the impact that had on the your overall analysis and I haven't really given that any thought are you saying because their headquarters are in Boston and the number of employees who are located there they were included in the analysis is that fair essentially yes so because we we got the data at a contract level so we you know this big company got X we were able to align those with addresses obviously and then put them in cities towns or counties as needed and so we had a line item for Suffolk Construction Company with an address in Boston and we knew what their receipts were as a part of this project so we were able to allocate that money that they got as the project manager to that location but being able to also look at it at a company level allowed us to make that differentiation of saying you know these big Boston impacts are due to the fact that the construction manager happens to be there it's not that you know because people here will all the you know sound dismissive but you know that's a common I live in western Massachusetts you know we which parenthetically I'm really glad for Zoom because I didn't want to drive from this kidding but you know I live in western mass and the the the complaint here is that the state only thinks by Eastern half of the states you know all the stuff goes there so I wanted to make a point of saying our data allows us to show that these big impacts in the city of Boston a lot of that if not most of that is just coincidentally where the construction manager happens to be based if that if Boston's office was in Burlington then all that money would have been in Burlington you know or if it was in Quincy it would have been in Quincy so once you remove the Suffolk part that the contracts that went to Boston weren't so disproportional seeming as it as it looked which is the the point that I was trying to make broadly but then to your point that yes so once we allocated that there we were able to account for some of the employment and income impacts yeah as a result yeah otherwise it would have been disproportionate that's very very helpful and then just because of sort of my concrete thinking you closed so well with your last slide could you just give us a couple of reminders the the goods and services used up where you had to do your takeaway that are specific to this project so the are you asking what kinds of goods and services would have been used up yeah I just think this what does that represent well because of course you you got to the the 2.6 new activity 2.6 million activity and you quite rightly explained but there is a cost of goods and services that are used up I think you did the the car industry for our example if you could give one that's you know for my concrete thinking just a good example for this project that would be really helpful okay got it so suppose I wanted to sell you a building so which is basically what we're talking about here right someone is buying a building um the price that I charge you for the building would include the cost of everything I had to buy to make the building that is now there plus everything I had to pay my workers everything I had to pay for equipment then profit and taxes and etc etc so that stuff that is left behind in the building that would be an example of the goods and services that are used up so I bought dimensional lumber to frame out the walls so in the case of economic activity that transaction would show up twice it would show up once that I bought it from the lumber mill it would show up again when I sold you the building because the price of the building includes the price of the lumber so in order to figure out what the net value is of that economy created you have to remove that double countering so you got to remove the plumbing fixtures you got to remove the wood the drywall and so on and only capture that value once which is in the value of the final building is that a bit clearer that's very very helpful it's such an important takeaway and explains how we went from that 2.6 down to the 1.6 so thank you it's the overall message really helpful Commissioner Ziniga thank you this conversation took me back to the time of the deliberation and what we were as Jackie was remembering the time for submitting the application and one of the things that we discussed at length that was a big plus for this for this project was the amount of public good that came from remediating a huge site that was contaminated had almost no alternative use given the cost of remediation and gave access to the city of Everett access to the to the harbor that every other surrounding community enjoyed but they didn't is there a way to besides in those broad terms is there a way to outline that or quantify that again I know it's not part of these analyses Rod but what from an economist from an economist perspective could you say about those other attributes sure actually we're struggling struggling isn't quite word we are wrestling with this same question in a project we're doing for the Department of Conservation and Recreation right now where we're looking at interesting some of the impacts of sort what are what is the return on conservation right this is a similar kind of question so you have a couple of different ways you can look at it some of them are more concrete than others some of the more concrete are for example looking at changes in adjacent or surrounding property values so what was the same exact unimproved property worth before and after the cleanup and so those increases in values essentially puts a monetary number on how much people we're willing to pay for this improved attraction another way that economists get at this is through a survey so river cleanups are often done this way that people ask so how much would you pay to contribute to wage differentials or another that more has to do with regional amenity not like a focus cleanup like this but you can look at how much less is someone willing to take to do the exact same job in a sunny beautiful beach town versus a cold and harsh you know midwestern location but for this specific thing I think we could look at the property values I think would be the easiest and if there were any issues with contamination and surrounding areas like if there are associate healthcare costs so in some places near some mines for example the dust happens to carry a lot of lead so you know schools and cities and surrounding those kinds of mines have a health impact from there I don't know what state this place was in if there was worry about contamination of dirt or water runoff in the surrounding areas but the health avoided healthcare costs and improved health outcomes would be another way for sure in addition to property values I can at least attest when I used to drive to work I would drive along part of the highway that goes along the river and at least some businesses are sprouting up that were recreation oriented particularly the kayak business where recreational use has been enhanced that river is much busier with boaters including crew and kayakers and people running along river and I can't imagine that it's not attributed to that cleanup so stay tuned maybe we can follow up I thought that was a really interesting question commissioned in Zuniga what is the benefit of of enhanced conservation Mark I think we might have another check other questions or comments it's fascinating Mark how would you like to close out this great report to both Rachel and Rod thank you so much this is a very exciting way to sort of close a difficult year to reflect back on this project which you know came to fruition in June of 2019 so we haven't been able to have enough be able to view enough boaters getting to encore because of the shutdown and the and the temporary suspensions and all of our own you know our remote work so we're looking forward to seeing all the benefits once 21 lifts a little bit of these remote operations Mark yes so thank you Rod and and Rachel for the report I think this is this is an important capstone on the construction phase of casinos in Massachusetts at least for now without knowing exactly where Region 3 is going but my back of the envelope math says that it's it's been over three projects is it three and a half billion dollars or so of construction and you can't deny the economic impact of that amount of money in the state over what is actually a relatively short period of time and to be able to have a neutral voice that that comes from the Sigma team and UMass Donahue Institute specifically is important and we shouldn't let such such an event go or story go untold as as Jackie said that the casino industry may get you may get small snippets of information but not a comprehensive look at the totality of the economic impact of this to the state of Massachusetts and quite honestly and especially now when we're a country that really needs as much economic help as as we possibly can so thanks for the hard work on this thank you Mark um turning now before we continue commissioners would you like a brief break I see a a couple of nods okay it is five sixteen should we do to top 30 or give a five minute five or ten I was hoping for a lunch break because we have a but I may be the only one here I think we have a couple of items later on that might merit some real discussion no I think that's fair and I'm sorry because I was thinking maybe we need a quick break and then a later lunch break but really is at this time fair to think about eating commissioner so should we do a half an hour and and be fine by me quarter of one perfect all right thank you I don't know if we'll see Jackie again um have a a lovely holiday period Jackie and thank you for your work today and as always it's so nice to see you thank you for having me and happy holidays to all of you thank you happy holidays we'll mute ourselves out and return at quarter of one thank you so much everyone all right we'll get started and we have a really meaty remaining portion of our meeting so I think I'm just getting my notes up now that we're turning to Dr. Lightbound you have that extensive business to take care of today good good afternoon good afternoon commissioners so our first item on the agenda is the Suffolk Downs Request for the premium free free period they've asked for October 10th through December 31st 2020 and this does require a vote it's part of the chapter 128c the simulcast legislation or Stemulcast law has everybody had a chance to become acquainted with the materials on that any questions for Dr. Lightbound and to proceed your Dr. Lightbound correct on this one correct you do and you require you'd like a vote today does somebody prepare to make a motion we can do that Madam Chair and with the commission approve Suffolk Downs Request for a premium free period from October 10th 2020 through and including December 31st for 2020 second thank you any further questions technical technical question that is not necessarily this is positive but the request goes beyond the current period for which they're allowed to simulcast pending renewal of the simulcasting law correct this is for 2020 this is for this this year that we're currently in oh oh yeah it's we're catching up where there wasn't new legislation addressing this issue we thought that we should have it on record that for this year this was what the what it was going to be depending on if we get new legislation new racing legislation next year that will probably be addressed in that legislation and if not we'll come back and ask for premium free period for 2021 later on okay thank you good clarification any other edits suggestions amendments Commissioner Cameron aye Commissioner O'Brien aye Commissioner Zuniga aye Commissioner Stebbins aye and I vote yes Erica 5-0 thank you the next two items item b and c the simulcast import request and the account wagering provider request both are normally taken up in a during a live racing application so for Plain Ridge the commission approved theirs during their application earlier this year in November where Suffolk legislation has been changed and they're not applying for live racing we bring this up as a separate issue so the first item the simulcast import locations are the simulcast locations that they would like to use for the coming year 2021 and I recommend that we approve this and it does require a vote any questions for Dr. Lightman on that does that does that implicate Commissioner Zuniga's earlier question on timing I see Mr. Tuttle has joined us no that's just for obviously if at some point Suffolk is not allowed to simulcast anymore they would seize simulcasting but until such time in 2021 these would be the locations they would be using we're comfortable with that okay do I have a motion Madam Chair I move that the commission approve the simulcast import locations requested by Suffolk Downs and identified in the attachment to its November 20, 2021 thank you questions edits Commissioner Cameron aye Commissioner O'Brien aye Commissioner Zuniga aye Commissioner Stebbins aye and I vote yes five zero Erica thank you so much Dr. Lightman the next item is item C the account wagering provider request from Suffolk Downs these providers have all been approved by the gaming commission before Express Bed is being rebranded so we've included that name as part of this approval so later on this year when that gets complete nobody will have questions about whether it's Express Bed or First Bed is that how you say it First Bed as you said Chip Tuttle's arms at the call CIO of Suffolk Downs deferred a chip yes that is how you say it thank you yes just so for those who don't know why I'm questioning that it's the number one slash capital S capital T so I wondered how Dr. Lightman is going to say that out loud thank you First Bed okay this does require a vote and my recommendation is to approve it any questions for Dr. Lightman other than that name do I have a motion Madam Chair I'm happy to move that the commission approve the Suffolk Downs request or approve all of Express Bed also known as First Bed TVG, Twin Spires Naira Beds and Fan Dual Racing as their account wagering providers second thank you any any further questions okay Commissioner Cameron aye Commissioner O'Brien aye Commissioner Zuniga aye Commissioner Stepans aye nine vote yes Erica five zero thank you Commissioner Dr. Lightman the next request from Suffolk Downs is is a new request they're requesting to use MBET they're a web-based mobile bedding platform I have today with me Chad Bork our senior financial analyst and chip title the COO of Suffolk Downs and I'll give a very brief intro and then turn it over to Chad and then he'll turn it over chip to discuss it and if you have questions so briefly the way it works is a patron would go to the teller at the racetrack and ask to set up an MBET account they will get a ticket that has the login information on it and as well as how much money they've put in and then what they can do is for that 24-hour period they can access the tote system basically and make bets from wherever they happen to be at Suffolk Downs if they're sitting at their table they don't have to get up each race to go place a bet it is a convenience factor it also is a little bit helpful with the COVID situation in that you're not touching the self-service bedding machines and you're not interacting as often with the tellers although obviously Suffolk Downs has COVID protocols in place to make these safe so I'll turn it over to Chad Bork now thank you Alex and good afternoon Madam Chair and Commissioners so as Alex has stated Anto provides the MBET service to their clients in this case Suffolk Downs which allows patrons to wager on their mobile phones tablets or their laptops so what you would do is after making the deposit you are given secured logging credentials and able to access the account and place wagers once you are done for the day you would then cash out with the teller so in its simplest form it really is just having kind of your own mobile teller window with you the site will only be able to be accessed through using Suffolk Downs Wi-Fi network this is to keep the way drain within the confines of the property at the end of the day your account is automatically deactivated all your data does run through Anto's back end system so all the account data will be on record with Anto Chair I know I asked about if the Wi-Fi would work out to the parking lot but I guess I'm told that that's not the case it'll work on the apron but not out in the parking lot is that correct? yeah so I'll ask Chip if you want to go ahead and respond to that yes you know we've got to run some additional tests but the Wi-Fi network is pretty concentrated in the building and the apron but we should you know I mean it is I would have to actually get on the Wi-Fi network and go out into the parking lot and see if it if it still has any the capacity still exists my strong suspicion is it doesn't because the Wi-Fi network doesn't always work in every area of the building so it would be a stretch for it to work in the parking lot but we're happy to verify that for the commission if that's required as part of this Mr. Tuttle I don't think that's required but today might be a good day to go test what do you think? and in fact our meeting so I could it go long enough that if you want to do it now yes I got some shoveling done with my earbuds on during the 10 to noon periods so that's funny is that answer your question though commissioner okay I have the benefit and I think most of us have a briefing on this which we appreciate Chad and Dr. Lightbound to just understand the technology it really is a customer service enhancement and as Dr. Lightbound points out perhaps an important enhancement you know should our COVID-19 restrictions need to extend out next year's simulcasting environment commissioner Stevens are you leaning in? yeah I am Madam Chair thanks I had a quick question and I know is the team at Suffolk rolls this out they're going to have lots of good communications to their patrons who are going to use this for the first time my interest or my question chip and Chad is around I come I use it if for some reason that day I do not go back to the window and cash out what happens if I come in the next day and say oh I forgot to cash out is the money still available to me you know we don't want to we don't want to have you know have those types of confrontations or circumstances but you know chip if you can speak to the approach you you plan to take to make sure that doesn't happen is this new product gets rolled out? yes so thank you commissioner and but let me answer your question first and then if I could indulge the chair to express my appreciation for your service I'd like to do that so the you get the that ticket that you get when you you go up to the window and say hey I'd like to use embed today you know here's $50 or whatever your deposit is and then as through the course of the day your your your phone your your mobile device is basically your own self-service wagering terminal and at the end of the day if you you still need that ticket right so that the same way you would take a betting ticket or a betting voucher that ticket is really you're the same you know in in the very same way that you would you would redeem a winning ticket or a voucher and that ticket remains good so that even if you don't cash out at the end of the day in the 24-hour period expires and you're you're no longer active on the embed platform you know even a week later or a few weeks later you can go in with that ticket and cash it for whatever your remaining balance is that's great thank you very much can I can I ask a question before we move on from that topic yes commission absolutely my question wasn't all of this that under that same hypothetical there's two different monies that might be on that though so some of it's a ticket so as if it were a paper ticket winning ticket but what if I don't bet everything I put $200 in I only bet $100 so maybe some of it's like a winning ticket and then some of it is just my cash so some of it could be treated as you get it later you get it like a lost tickets in my bet how's the money that I maybe don't get at the end of the day treated that's not a bet it's just my cash I haven't gotten back that remains in your balance commissioner so if you were to put $50 in and and let's say you wagered 20 and lost that you know you when you went to cash the ticket in a few days later that $30 balance would remain on the ticket but then what if I forget about it if you forget about it it's it's the same as if you have a winning ticket on a race and you know you lose that or forget about it there's there are procedures in place where you can appeal you you come in and say hey I lost the ticket here's when you know on this day and then we go through at the end of the year without standing tickets and the commission approves requests I believe this is the case I don't I don't want to miss speak so Alex please Dr. Leiphorn please correct me if I'm wrong but there are ways for patrons to redeem lost tickets based on a testing that they were there you know a certain time of day we have cameras obviously in the facility that track who comes back and forth to the mutual windows so that's that's how lost tickets are dealt with and then of course at the end of the calendar after a certain period of time in Chad may know this off the top of his head those tickets become outstanding tickets and outstanding tickets by statute revert any unclaimed tickets become outstanding tickets those by statute revert to the purse account that we pay over to the New England HBPA but in my mind there's a a lost ticket where I placed a bet and cash I put almost to get a debit card for the day if I never actually took the cash to put it on a ticket is it still considered a lost wager or isn't that my cash I should be able to get back some other way and it's like a lost deposit is it like abandoned property is my question because some of it was abandoned property some of it would seem to be a lost ticket yeah so so a lost ticket is doesn't become abandoned property until whatever the time frame is that expires but but if you were let me give you an example that may help you think through this commissioner you are able to come in go to the window the mutual window and buy a voucher you know you can give the clerk $100 and get a $100 betting voucher and then you can use that betting voucher and putting put that into any self-service terminal and you know as through the course of the day you know as you bet off that voucher you know you get your balance returned to you in the form of a slip of paper in the form of a ticket so you know similar to you know casinos paying out with you know a ticket a paper slip that comes out of slot machine as opposed to you know coins actually coming out so you know the patrons are quite used to the idea that they have to hold on to their tickets in order to redeem them and again so this is and maybe I'm not understanding your question but there's no distinction between you know what's left on your account and wins and losses you know that's the same thing right if you start with $50 and you're successful and you have $80 at the end of the day you know you've only bet $20 but you've won $50 off that $20 bet now you have $30 in your account now you have $80 you'd be able to redeem the ticket for $80 and if you lose the ticket you'd be able to come in and tell us and say hey I was here on this day and I lost the ticket and and you know we we have not you know we really haven't run into problems with patrons who have been refused requests of lost tickets oh I'm sorry I can give the the timing of the unclaimed tickets it's something that Chad and I have just recently been discussing because that's going to be coming up in front of the commission in January probably every patron has the entire year after the year they bet to claim their winnings off of a ticket so at the end of that period if a particular ticket has not been cashed it becomes an unclaimed ticket and as Chip mentioned there are times when a patron has lost a ticket and they go to Suffolk Downs or Plainridge they can a lot of times they can go back on the cameras and actually see when they place the bet but the patron can be very specific about the time and the location and the amount and then the perimutrials can go back and verify it so then at the end of the year they'll go over it with Chad if there are any that are being claimed by the patron and if Suffolk Downs and Chad feel that it is a legitimate claim then Suffolk Downs will pay out on that ticket to the patron and that's taken out of the unclaimed tickets obviously If I may emphasize something on Commissioner O'Brien's question the key you said that in your mind it's two different things and the key is that it isn't possibly balance whether it came from an initial deposit or the winnings of a ticket or the result of both a balance and wagering that went up and down the ticket contains the balance and that follows the same procedure that they explain you know it's not again it's not different things it's a marker into your account as I understand it what they issue you when you initially funded is a code that points into the balance that you have in that account and that's what they will give you at the end of the day if you redeem it and that will remain you know for up to a year if you don't redeem it for a year etc Yeah to me there is a conceptual difference that I realize maybe industry wise this isn't the standard but particularly when you're moving into an electronic tracking it would seem very easy to be able to treat it differently but you know maybe that's a rule question that I have but it would seem to me that if you're getting this electronically through an app there's a much easier way to make sure monies get back to people without putting the onus on them for lost ticket processes but that's a conversation for another day Understood Yeah that would be a key difference Yeah I would almost expect with the technology you said you'll be able to identify the page and it still has an uncollected balance you know unredeemed balance and that we might actually find ourselves in a position where you could get the money back to the individual before that year period is up Maybe that's really a question for Mr. Tuttle is there anything in the technology that I don't know a button that could allow you to say request my balance or something for that effect I'll have to ask well I mean you know you can request your balance at any time by going back to the window and redeeming the ticket and you know I don't mean to be overly obvious with that part of it but this is to be as to further explain it maybe and help help everyone's understanding you're not required to show an ID to do this you're not required to give your social security number or you know it's not an ADW account It's not ADW that's important you know they're the state the Commonwealth has specific laws and regulations around ADW accounts and how those work and of course the ADW companies as national entities all you know have protocols that they follow so if I have an ADW account to your point Commissioner O'Brien yes you know at any time I can redeem my balance and you know they they can send it to me via PayPal or Venmo or you know just I can I can make a withdrawal from my account this is is really basically just turning your mobile device into a self-service betting terminal for the day so you know your cash is being held behind the window at Suffolk Downs as if you you just basically have a betting voucher but that voucher you can bet off that voucher through your phone and then you know at the end of the day you you take your voucher and bring it back to redeem it for for whatever your balance is as as Commissioner Zunagicix explained I do I think I understand the differentiation you're making but but I it may be that it's just terminology here I see this as strictly a customer service enhancement where you don't have to get into line to make your bet and apparently Dr. Lightbound said sometimes when those races are so close together you might miss out an opportunity to bet if the lines were long and so they really are doing it from their seat doesn't mean they're getting their steps in though but unlike the ADW where and I'm and I'm correct on this I clarified with Chad and Alex that ADW anyone in Massachusetts if they set up an ADW can bet on horse racing from their couch and in within the Commonwealth's boundaries and in this case it's a customer service where that mobile device can only work for as a means to place your your bet using the amount that you deposit at the beginning of your day from the actual simulcast venue at Suffolk and so it really is just a customer service enhancement without any even though it seems more technologically advanced platform to place the bet it really isn't much more than that enhancement is not to just diminish that enhancement particularly if it's helpful on COVID-19 but that was the only way I could think about it and yeah I Madam Chair I see it that way too I mean it's you know we obviously have a lot of questions about it because it's a new technology and how does it sit into our guidelines but you know to Dr. Lightbounds point you know it's it's convenience for the customer it's going to hopefully draw more people out to physically go to Suffolk Downs and then spend the day or make some bets and during this COVID period it certainly is ease and convenience for me to to bet without worrying about you know any public health impact and you know in many ways it's sort of shifting perhaps to that that approach to use more you know of our handheld devices our cell phones which will of course please the younger demographics so there's I'm sure that that's in the back of the minds of of the summercast industry so any further questions on on this for well just just a comment perhaps perhaps Mr. Total would want to chime in on this let me reference it by saying that I'm in favor of this I think it's it's what you both point out chair of technology that is both an efficiency on on the operations of customer service and especially important or you know useful that during you know this notion of COVID and the necessity to maintain social distance etc but at least um in my mind and and this doesn't take me away from my you know feeling capable about this it is at least conceivable that this would mean less need for tellers because it's especially people get used to you know operating comfortable with the technology on their phones they would still need to fund it before and after so you still need a teller you know at the beginning or the end of the day but you might not need that many if more the more and more people would use it is that a fair sort of statement Mr. Lovell and again I'm fully comfortable with request and in support of it but I think that's the one area that I see as you know at least worth of mentioning I think you raise a fair point Commissioner Zuniga I can tell you that's not our intent at all it's it's not you know we we had not introduced this we we we discussed this with Amtoad our tote provider over the course of the summer you know we we got comfortable ourselves with with how the platform would work we certainly aren't looking at it as a way to reduce the workforce in any capacity really more of a of a patron convenience and and we're not quite sure how many people will adopt it as a patron convenience but we thought it was worth a pilot program I you know we'd be happy to come back and whatever period of time the commission thinks is adequate to you know give your report on how it's working and and whether it's been well received by our customers or or not but you know we certainly are are we've worked really hard to try to maintain the workforce throughout these difficult circumstances during COVID and we'll we'll continue to do that commission Cameron yeah Mr. Total I I think some of the demographics of your of your patrons may may lend itself that they would be more comfortable continuing with the window some of them may be like my mother who still uses a flip phone yeah we all have different I mean I still read books not on Kindle and you know or on cell phones I don't show up on Amazon but anyway thank you for those comments and so I'm but he likes SharePoint yeah I love SharePoint yeah no the idea I'm not making a direct connection into into any of that that you you're totally correct I believe that it depends on how comfortable the customer base you know becomes with the technology if if at all and I think the most impo