Community agreement process under way for gaming applicants

The licensing process for resort casinos and a slots parlor in Massachusetts moved forward over the summer, as the final application deadlines draw nearer.

Applicants for a resort casino license (Category 1) and a slots parlor license (Category 2) continued to negotiate host agreements with communities. The agreements, which must be signed by local officials and approved by a local referendum prior to the application deadline, are designed to mitigate the impacts of a casino or slots parlor on a host community.

The communities of Boston, Everett, Springfield, Raynham, Plainville, West Springfield, Leominster, Tewksbury and Millbury have signed host community agreements. Some of the agreements have already received voter approval, and the votes for several others were scheduled in August and September.

Signed host community agreements may be viewed on the Massachusetts Gaming Commission website (www.massgaming.com).

After completing host community agreements, many gaming facility applicants began the negotiation of surrounding community agreements. At a meeting of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission on Aug. 9, Commission Ombudsman John Ziemba urged potential surrounding communities to contact developers to discuss likely development impacts (if they had not already begun talks) and noted that the commission had urged applicants to reach out to potential surrounding communities as well.

“We’ve had a number of conversations with applicants,” Ziemba said. “We’ve expressed to them how important the outreach to communities is to the commission – how this is going to be a significant factor in the reviews of each one of their applications. And we urge them to not only contact those communities that they believe will be potential surrounding communities, but to be in contact with other communities so that they can understand the range of impacts or lack of impacts.”

At the request of the Gaming Commission, applicants recently submitted to the commission narrative updates regarding their outreach efforts.

The commission also asked the applicants to include information about how they planned to use regional planning agencies to provide technical assistance to potential surrounding communities seeking to ascertain likely impacts on development. While it is not required, the commission encouraged applicants to coordinate with the planning agencies to provide regional or individual technical assistance.

No surrounding community agreements have been negotiated and signed as yet. Unlike host community agreements, surrounding community agreements do not require voter approval. Their completion, however, will be considered as part of the application evaluation process.

Gaming Commission Chair Stephen Crosby stated, “If the applicant comes to us with … unresolved communities that have to go into arbitration or subsequent negotiations, we’re going to say that’s not a very satisfactory situation.”

The Category 1 application deadline is Dec. 31, and the Category 2 deadline is Oct. 4.