ORDER-2017-7 : Communication from Massachusetts State Lottery Commission regarding KENO To Go License at Franklin Market, 463 Franklin St., Melrose, MA

Transcript (~12 min @ 9:05)

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▶ 9:00 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Seconded by Alderman Inferno. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That order will also be placed on file. Finally, we have another order, 2017-7. It's a communication from the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission regarding the keynote to go license at Franklin Market, 463 Franklin Street in Melrose. The history of this order is that we were notified that there had been an application that the state wished to

▶ 9:31 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: and offered us an opportunity as a board to respond the board voted its objection

▶ 9:39 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: and sent a letter to the lottery so noting its objection to issuing that license I have checked with the city solicitor we have had no further communication from the lottery on this matter I do believe that the applicants

▶ 10:03 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: are here uh president khan good evening everyone just motions second rules second second all in

▶ 10:10 Speaker 5: favor aye aye yes sir hi i have the keynote to go issue for the franklin market members 463. i used to we started last year the business and keynote to go to come after three months with regulations for the rules and regulation for the lottery we start a couple months and after the license take out and we call a lot of these and he said the issue for the syria melrose so that's why i come here to kino to go because i know the no allow the monitor so we need only kino to go license for that so kino to go's game is like you know the mass cast mega million spirals just like games kino to go has two minute games so people play like 50 60 kino take the ticket home you check the online you come back to cast the tickets like that is people's not hanging out over there i see and i i don't like the people hanging out too anyway because city mellows is the different city you know i know that i have the store full store i have the store in quincy is many people they hang it out but those are different kinos like kinos monitor too many monitors and everything because the city mellows is the difference way

▶ 11:16 Speaker 2: you know so there was no monitor no monitor okay there's no allowed monitor too anyway so

▶ 11:24 Speaker 5: So I don't want to follow like broken the rules. We couldn't follow the rules, you know?

▶ 11:28 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Thank you. Alderman Conn, did you have a comment?

▶ 11:31 Speaker 4: No, I'll yield to further speakers before I make a comment.

▶ 11:37 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Okay, is there anyone else from the committee? No, Alderman Tramontozzi.

▶ 11:48 John N. Tramontozzi: Thank you, Madam Chairman. Mr. Patel is running a very desirable market there, as we know the history of that market. And he is a new owner, and I think he is doing a fine job. The place looks clean. It is well kept, and people in the community frequent the market. We certainly want to encourage him to continue in his business uh and um and service the franklin street in the highlands community as he's doing now i personally i don't see any problems uh there now since he's taken over unlike the past we won't go into that but um the uh this if if i understand correctly this is not a you don't have keynote rooms like some places have these keynote rooms and it's no monitors so people will come in and play a game as they would with megabucks and so forth I understand it has been traditionally our practice to object to these keynote to go licenses and frankly I supported the objections to those maybe partly because I don't know much about keno i don't really play it uh but for i understand the king of the go um and i and i defer it to uh through you madam chairman is um are there other convenience stores or markets in

▶ 13:21 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: melrose that provide that service now yes i believe that there are nine keno licenses identical to what mr cattell is seeking okay currently in melrose with with that in mind i

▶ 13:29 John N. Tramontozzi: really don't see the the the objection that we should continue to place on this establishment and so I would give the the the gentleman opportunity to to have that license in places and you know we'll monitor it as we monitor all such establishments in the city and we I don't anticipate any problems but as our board would do and anytime that there would be a problem we would call these people before us and and render some decisions on future uses of the license so with that my I would I would not object to allowing that keynote to go licensed at that Franklin market thank you for the opportunity to speak on his

▶ 14:23 Gail Infurna: behalf certainly Alderman Inferno from the committee thank you very much as one ward alderman to another board ultimate i certainly always um will listen to you so i certainly will make a recommend um i will recommend this to the full board as um to recommend it or

▶ 14:42 Gail Infurna: how would we word this what do we uh well we have already we have to write to the um commission

▶ 14:47 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: again right we have already sent a letter uh to the commission a letter of objection so I believe at this point we would need a new motion and we had a motion to reconsider it which failed at the last meeting so I'm not sure if we would need a new order Alderman Boisselle can we get clarification some clarification from our city solicitor who happens to be here or could Mr. Patel just reapply and we not object well just so members of the board are

▶ 15:21 Speaker 1: aware so the state lottery sent notification out to the city of melrose and this board i think in july voted to oppose the application for a keynote license july 18th okay yeah so i i would i would assume the safest approach for the board would be to take up some kind of a vote to rescind the prior action and i don't know how your rules would dictate that if that's the will of the body and at that point with the rescission vote in hand you would send correspondence to the state lottery just making them aware that the board has rescinded a prior vote to oppose and now has decided to support the application thank you councillor president khan yeah what i would

▶ 16:13 Speaker 4: suggest for this evening we don't meet again until september 29th september 19th so we couldn't act on this until a full board meeting at september 19th so if the committee just and i'm not telling the committee what they should do i'm only suggesting what they might do if they take any kind of a vote which indicates that they want to reconsider their prior action then i'm sure we can procedurally square this away before the full board meeting on the 19th

▶ 16:40 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: so would a motion to table it be appropriate or perhaps if you want to rescind the previous if you want to rescind the previous vote and then at that point we could proceed in september with

▶ 16:55 Speaker 4: the full board i don't think you want to respectfully i don't think you want to table it if you table it you keep it in committee i think you want to make and if this is what the committee wants if you want to make some affirmation that you want the license to issue it doesn't really matter what vote you take as long as we get it onto our agenda for our september 19th meeting and then we could take an action as the solicitor suggests i guess it would be a motion to rescind

▶ 17:18 Gail Infurna: our um position on the keynote to go for the license at franklin market all right is there

▶ 17:33 Monica C. Medeiros: a second second alderman lemon second set so we have a motion to rescind our letter of objection uh all in alderman medeiros thank you uh on discussion and i i'd like to be able to address you here too uh this board several times many times in the past has objected to these licenses and i know there was a comment that we would monitor things going forward but this is our only option in order to reject it we have no authority to monitor these licenses beyond this point and some of my personal frustration is that you it seems you were granted a license by the lottery over our objection we received notice back in december and we sent a letter at that time

▶ 18:32 Monica C. Medeiros: we sent a letter of objection on December 23rd 2015 objecting to the keynote to go license and it seems as though something was issued outside of our objection so I you know more so than than anything you know in in opposition to you or your business or anything like that it's to the way that the lottery has handled this and to the fact that you know right now there's no monitors but We have nothing to say about whether or not they allow monitors in the future. And even if we object, I have no faith that they will honor our objection going forward in the future. In the past, I've objected to licenses. In particular, I can think of a location that's in the Towers Plaza. And one of the reasons was its proximity to the McCarthy House. And this is a location that's very close to the steel house. So my concerns are very similar to what they were before. So I guess we have some time to think it over, but I'm not sure that I would change my mind considering the past.

▶ 19:44 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Thank you. You're welcome. Is there anyone else from the committee or on for the board? So we have a motion that's been duly seconded to rescind the order to move it along to the full board, is all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Opposed. So that motion carries. So that will go to our next full board meeting on September 19th. And you are welcome to attend that meeting again and speak in public on that order.

▶ 20:11 Speaker 5: September 19th, right?

▶ 20:12 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: September 19th, correct.

▶ 20:14 Speaker 5: Thank you.

▶ 20:15 Speaker 2: You're welcome.

▶ 20:17 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Motion to adjourn. And we have a motion made by Alderman Inferno to adjourn. Seconded by Alderman Lemmon. All in favor? Aye. I opposed.

▶ 20:30 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: This meeting is adjourned, stay tuned for appropriations.