Casino votes coming up in Taunton, Freetown, Lakeville
Steve decosta/Standard-Times special On Howland Road in Lakeville, the sign offers advice for both Lakeville and Freetown voters.
The proposals
Mashpee Wampanoag
Four-phase, $500 million resort casino complex at Liberty and Union Industrial Park in East Taunton. First phase would include a 150,000-square-foot casino with 3,000 slot machines, 150 table games and 40 poker tables; a 300 room hotel; food court, buffet and two fine-dining restaurants; and 10 retail stores. Subsequent phases would include additional gaming space, two more hotels, an event center and an indoor-outdoor water park.
Wampanaog Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah)
Three-phase, $300 million resort casino limited to 20 acres of the 500 it controls between Exits 8 and 9 off Route 140 in Freetown and Lakeville. First phase would include a 145,000 square foot with 2,700 slot machines, 36 table games and a poker room and a 150-room hotel. Subsequent phases would include gaming space, restaurants and retail outlets.
After months of seductive sweet talking, the state's two casino-hopeful Indian tribes will find out in the next two weeks if they're welcome in Southeastern Massachusetts.
Voters in Freetown have the first say as they head to the polls Tuesday to weigh in on a proposal by the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) to build a casino in the Rocky Woods area just west of Route 140.
Then, on Saturday, Lakeville voters will offer their opinion on an alternative Aquinnah plan to take that same $167 million casino proposed for Freetown and plop it down in a quarry on the opposite side of 140.
A week later, on June 9, it's Taunton's turn, with residents voting on a Mashpee Wampanoag plan to develop a $500 million casino at the traffic-challenged junction of Routes 24 and 140.
Not that all of it matters, anyway.
The votes are nonbinding, and neither the Aquinnah or the Mashpee have agreed to go away if they're jilted by the voters.
The tribes have been putting their best feet forward, pitching their plans as engines that will drive jobs and economic development. They present themselves as stewards of sacred lands, committed to becoming trusted and valued members of the community and offering mitigation for any harm their casinos would bring.
"We are local," Aquinnah tribal chairwoman Cheryl Andrews-Maltais told residents at a recent forum. "We are in your community. Your community is our community."
Her Mashpee counterpart, Cedric Cromwell, has spoken glowingly about his tribe's adopted hometown. "We see Taunton as a cultural gateway to Southeastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod and the Islands," Cromwell said. "Taunton is a fantastic city and we want to share it with people from all over the world."
For the most part, residents would welcome more jobs and economic activity, but they have more basic concerns. They want to know about traffic, the possible increase in crime and addiction, the feared drop in property values and the elusive changes in their quality of life.
And not all of them want to be shared.
"This is small town America at its best," Rhonda Silvia-Alves said of her beloved Freetown at a recent public forum. "We want it to remain that way. ... We need to support one another's campaigns against this project by voting no."
But Silvia-Alves, a bundle of anti-casino energy in recent weeks, said the tribes and community officials have been playing a game of divide and conquer.
"They're intentionally playing communities against each other, telling us we have to vote yes because the other communities might vote yes. They say if we're not the host community we'll be getting the scraps."
If that's the case, though, she said it's backfired.
"This is bringing (Freetown and Lakeville) together like no other issue before," she said. "It's not the governments; it's a groundswelling, grassroots movement that's bringing the towns together."
predicting outcome
How will the communities vote? It's hard to drag a prediction out of almost anybody on either side of the issue.
By nature, opponents tend to be more vocal, while proponents are less likely to argue the issue.
Clyde Barrow, the gambling guru of UMass Dartmouth's Center for Policy Analysis thinks he has it figured out.
"I haven't seen or done any polls, but I think the referendum in Taunton will pass by a substantial margin," Barrow said.
"There doesn't seem to be much political activity in Freetown or Lakeville, except for the occasional "casiNO" sign. However, apathy in a casino referendum usually means it will fail."
While one can drive through most of Freetown and Lakeville without seeing a single pro-casino sign, there's an active organization pitching the Taunton proposal. Together for Taunton, a group of residents and business owners supported by the Mashpee tribe, has a downtown storefront and runs an elaborate Web site.
Taunton's size also may be a factor in the vote. At 48 square miles, its Massachusetts' second largest city, with only Boston covering more area.
"Taunton is one of the biggest cities around, area-wise," said Anthony LaCourse, chairman of Preserve Taunton's Future, a coalition of groups opposing the casino. "There are people who live in North Taunton who never go anywhere near where the casino would be. They don't think it's any big deal."
Freetown is a much smaller, more closely knit community, but it too has divisions that could affect the vote.
Judging by the placement of signs, opposition grows the closer one gets to the proposed casino location. While almost every other house along some East Freetown roads sports an anti-casino sign, they are rare sights on any street in Assonet.
"It's like when Wal-Mart was proposed near Route 24," Selectmen Chairman Lisa Pacheco said. "It's a really big issue to that side of town, but not so much on the other side. But it's an issue that affects the whole town. That's how I look at it and I wish more people would look at it that way."
It's an emotional issue, and "people are going to vote from the heart," Pacheco said. "Personally, I don't care how people vote. I just hope they vote on the right information, not on the information based on innuendo or rumor."
head start
The federally-recognized tribes were given a head start on locating a casino in the southeastern part of the state by the new Expanded Gaming Act, which authorized one slot parlor and up to three resort casinos. The casino set aside for Southeastern Massachusetts will be presented to a tribe if, by July 31, it is able to obtain property, hold a referendum in the host community, negotiate a compact with the governor and have it approved by the Legislature and convince the State Gaming Commission that the land can be taken into trust by the federal government. If those terms are not met, the commission would be free to seek
The more aggressive Mashpees are much further along in the process, already having begun negotiations for a compact, which determines the conditions under which the casino can operate, and worked out an Intergovernmental Agreement that would give Taunton $33 million in upfront costs and up to $13 million a year as mitigation for hosting the casino. The City Council debated the agreement for four hours last week but did not vote on it.
The Aquinnah have not yet begun talks with the governor, but that's not the tribe's fault. It has asked the governor to negotiate a compact for the Freetown-Lakeville site but the state so far has refused, claiming the tribe gave up its gaming rights in a 1987 land agreement.
The tribe is threatening to take the issue to federal court if the governor refuses to negotiate.
It wouldn't be the first lawsuit on this issue.
New York-based KG Urban Enterprises, which hopes to build a commercial casino at the site of the abandoned Cannon Street power plant in New Bedford, filed suit in federal court to have the tribal preference stricken from the law, but the suit was dismissed on Feb. 17. A hearing on KG's appeal is scheduled for June 7.
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