A Gambling Facility at Suffolk Downs will cost Massachusetts Taxpayers - ALL OF US - + $500 MILLION for infrastructure improvements. [The insolvent partner of Suffolk Downs is Caesars, one step from bankruptcy according to industry experts. Their entire cash flow goes to pay debt.]
Casino foes: Payouts not worth costs
Opponents of the East Boston casino declared yesterday that they have the support to defeat the Suffolk Downs proposal at the polls, despite a pot-sweetening pledge by the gaming palace developers to give millions back to the neighborhood.
“If they promised to pave the streets in gold, the residents of East Boston are far too savvy and can see beyond that,” said Celeste Myers, head of the No Eastie Casino group. “The luster of gleaming streets will fade in comparison to the weight of the impacts.”
Myers said internal phone-banking calls by her grassroots group — “we don’t have the money for polls” — show that 60 percent of those questioned oppose the casino.
But those numbers, however unscientific, could shift with Tuesday’s announcement that a Suffolk Downs casino would pay the city $32 million annually — and possibly upwards of $52 million — as part of a host agreement. City officials said of that money, $20 million each year would go to a trust to directly compensate neighborhoods impacted by the casino — and East Boston would get the lion’s share for community improvements.
“It’s really easy to get heady and carried away if you think of the sums of money being thrown out. But these numbers were arrived at by taking into account the reparations, the mitigations for very real impacts to our city,” Myers said.
“It boils down to $493 for each resident in East Boston a year,” she added. “That’s a pretty paltry sum to compensate us for all the impacts: the foreclosures, the impacts on qualify of life, the drunken driving, the rising crime and rising traffic.”
Myers’ $493 per resident estimate is based on East Boston receiving the full $20 million annually from the trust, and a neighborhood population of 40,500.
“I don’t want the casino because I waitress and I think it will make business go down and I will make less money,” said Liz Lopez, 23, who works at La Hacienda Restaurant on Meridian Street.
“Everybody will be at the casino and the restaurant will be empty.”
- See more at: http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/08/casino_foes_payouts_not_worth_costs#sthash.1iOWN515.dpuf
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