The administrator of the State Racing and Gaming Commission says they’ll start the process of awarding new gambling licenses in March. They’ll take two days, and each of the 10 organizations who’ve applied will have 45 minutes to present their proposals. Jack Ketterer says commission members will visit the proposed sites in April, and then start asking questions. He says sometime in the first or second week in May there’ll be a commission meeting in which they’ll hear quesitons from the public. He says the commission will also ask questions of the applicants based on the public comment, presentations, D-C-I background checks and other information.Ketterer says the commission will also make an important decision at that same meeting. He says the last thing at the meeting will be to determine a specific number of licenses to award. He says that could be a specific number of licenses, a maximum number, or a range of numbers. Ketterer says they’ll then hold a meeting a week after that to make a the final decision on who gets a license. The state legislature left it up to the commission to decide on the number of new licenses and Ketterer says there are a lot of factors that’ll go into that decision. He says he knows the commission members are sensative to the concerns that some people think we don’t need any new licenses, and some think that there some that think we need more. He says the commission members have to weigh both sides. One of the issues that might not play is the comission’s decision is a sociological study on the impact of gambling. Ketterer says the study may not be ready. He says it’s a piece of what the commission will consider if it’s done in time to consider before they move toward awarding the licenses. The 10 license applications come from seven counties, one each from Worth, Webster, Washington, Wapello and Franklin. Two applications came from Palo Alto and three from Black Hawk County.