Atlantic City: Soaring Property Taxes, Poor School Performance

...For resident who hung on in Atlantic City despite the casinos' encroachment, property taxes increased 64 percent between 1989 and 1995.

Perhaps the most visible testimony to the limits of of what casinos can accomplish is Atlantic City High School. The building is am impressive, sprawling facility built for $80 million, most of which came from taxes levied on casinos. But in spite of all of the money poured into the high school, old problems persist. The high school's students are racially divided, dropout rates are high, and test scores have been so poor that the school is being specially monitored by the state.

Jobs in the new service industries require employees with particulate skills -- promptness, an ability to manage routines, and the courage and tenacity to subsist on low wages chief among them. For teenagers attending Atlantic City High School, any motivation to achieve may be stunted by their scanty job prospects. Although casinos employ 40,000 people in Atlantic City -- 2,000 more than the population of the town -- the town's unemployment rate is more than 15 percent, about two and a half times the average unemployment in the rest of New Jersey. The fact of the matter is that Atlantic City's residents have remained impoverished during the casinos' twenty-two-year trek through the town.

"Bad Bet, The Inside Story of the Glamour, Glitz and Danger of America's Gambling Industry," Timothy O'Brien, page 91