SAUGUS — The Massachusetts Gaming Commission approved some of the funding the town had requested from the Community Mitigation Fund during its meeting on Thursday.
The town had requested $200,000 in funding from the commission, but it only received $90,000. Due to incomplete information provided when the town requested the funds, mostly related to insufficient scopes of work, some projects did not receive funding.
Notably, the commission did not provide funding for the town to design and construct a pedestrian crossing on Ballard Street, which would lead to the new Saugus RiverWalk, and a project to identify and subsequently study key intersections.
“This approach doesn’t meet with the way our guidelines work. We do require that communities have identified what it is that they want to study and have a scope of work for that,” Chief Joseph Delaney said of the intersection project.
For all projects that were approved for funding, the commission stipulated that more information must be provided.
Delaney recommended $30,000 for the town’s project to explore economic-development opportunities on the RiverWalk.
“Initially, we didn’t have any kind of a detailed scope on this. We asked for additional information on that, which they did provide, but again, this is something that we’re recommending — that they submit their final scope of work to their division for approval before they go out and get bids or quotes for the work,” Delaney said.
After recommendations were made to fund some of the projects, Commissioner Nakisha Skinner asked Delaney if he had any concerns that the commission would not receive the necessary information.
“We won’t pay for anything until they meet the conditions,” Delaney said. “We need to get that information, it will be a condition in their grant, in the grant instrument itself, that they will outline that they will have to make those submissions to us before we will agree to pay the funds.”
