The D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission held its monthly board meeting this morning at RFK Stadium. Nothing too major to report, but there were a few noteworthy items. The highlights:

-The commission is still waiting on its first rent payment from the Nationals for the new ballpark. The payment is due 45 days after the commencement of the lease, but the team believes the commission hasn't quite completed certain requirements in the lease that would allow it to actually commence. (To be clear, this does not mean the team has been playing at Nationals Park rent free. Once the lease officially commences, the team will be required to make all payments dating back to the beginning of the season.)

To satisfy the Nationals, the commission must still submit to the team a full set of maintenance manuals relating to the stadium, it must provide operations training to certain team employees, and it must turn over extra materials known as attic stock to the team.

There is some pressure to resolve this issue soon, as the first bond payment for the stadium is due later this summer.

-Readers have probably heard the term "punchlist" when it referring to the final work to be done on the ballpark. For Nationals Park, the list contained a whopping 27,600 items. Of those 27,600, more than 16,000 have already been resolved. Most of the items are small and would not be noticed by most fans, but there are 200 "high priority" items and 15 "top priority" items, ranging from air conditioning problems in the ticketing office, the installation of televisions in right field for those seats that have obstructed views of the scoreboard, and cracks in concrete on the stadium ramps. Much of the remaining work centers around the team offices, which were built in the last phase of construction. The commission and the team are meeting with the architects and construction team to resolve these issues as soon as possible.

-The commission is close to finalizing a new lease agreement with D.C. United at RFK Stadium. The team has essentially offered to "buy out" the commission so that it has full control of the revenue from soccer events at the stadium. The commission has agreed in principle but the two sides are still about $175,000 apart on a buyout figure. Under the terms of the lease, the pressure to attract soccer events lies more with the team than the commission.

-The commission is projecting a $500,000 budget shortfall for the coming year and has submitted a request for the money to the office of the City Administrator. It has already been granted a $2 million subsidy, though that money has not yet been received. To cut the budget shortfall, the commission has placed great emphasis on attracting a big, revenue-producing event at RFK Stadium sometime this summer. Commission staffers are working with Desho Productions, an event management company, to identify and attract new events. Ollie Harper, the commission's director of facilities management, likened the attraction of a big event to a "final exam" for Desho.

"We have to have high revenue generating event and it has to happen this year," Harper said. "And that's the big test."