Phony Promises Never Materialize!

Bill Kearney

Massachusetts ‘GAMING’ Future

Property tax relief was our pro-casino lawmakers’ number one selling point to legalizing casino gambling.

Back in 2004 Gov. Rendell promised Pennsylvania residents that the approval of casino gambling would bring major property tax relief. ...

Bucks County Courier Times - September 18, 2013 12:00 - Tax relief gamble hasn't paid off

When casino gambling was passed by our state Legislature, its purpose was to lower property taxes.
We were lied to -- again.

The impact fees are a farce. For example, how are Morrisville, Middletown, Hulmeville, Bristol Township, and the rest of Bucks County impacted by traffic and related nuisances generated by PARX casino in Bensalem? Are we in constant traffic jams, bothered by casino lights and noise? No!

Meanwhile, even Bensalem residents continue to suffer from escalating property taxes. What happened to the property tax relief?

Our county and local governments beat taxpayers to the casino money feeding troth via those impact fees. Elderly couples who haven't had kids in school for 40-50 years are still paying the escalating school taxes. Many will be cold in the winter, forgo food and medicine to pay these taxes. Many will lose the home they toiled a lifetime to pay for to a tax sale.

How much sadder can the tax situation get?

Charles Boyer

Levittown

20 DAYS TO THE PLAINVILLE SLOTS REFERENDUM!

20 DAYS TO THE PLAINVILLE SLOTS REFERENDUM!Watch our Countdown of Reasons to VOTE NO!

Reason #20 to VOTE NO SLOTS:
A racetrack casino at Plainridge would have a serious impact on surrounding neighborhoods.
The neighborhoods of Haynes Road, Harness Path, and Mirimichi Street will bear the brunt of the changes in quality of life: the increase in noise, lights, and traffic, as well as lowered property values will be felt most by those living from a few hundred feet to a half mile away from the racetrack casino. The selectmen have neither suggested nor offered any mitigation to those living closest to the site, which selectman Rob Rose calls “almost not even in Plainville.”

VOTE NO SLOTS on TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10th. The polls are open 8am to 8pm.

COME TO OUR FORUMSunday, September 8th, 4pm at the Senior Center

Please get the word out to your neighbors and friends by sharing our Countdown of Reasons to VOTE NO.

Destroying A Community

“These plans really are beautiful, and if Suffolk Downs was building anything other than a casino, I think I would be wowed as well,” said Jessica Curtis, a resident of East Boston’s Wood Island area. “But the fact is that we’re bringing in something that will have significant impacts on substance use, drug and alcohol addictions, and crime rates in our communities.”

East Boston residents praise environmental plan for proposed casino, but reservations remain

Posted by Jeremy C. Fox March 8, 2013

Suffolk Downs

Sketches for the proposed Suffolk Downs/Caesars Entertainment casino show a lush, green approach to the new casino building, at upper right.

By Jeremy C. Fox, Town Correspondent

Suffolk Downs received a largely positive response this week to an environmental plan for the $1 billion resort casino it has proposed to develop alongside its thoroughbred racetrack with partner Caesars Entertainment.

Presenting on their home turf — inside the track’s clubhouse — with many current and former employees present, members of the development team described a lush new environment for the area surrounding Suffolk Downs, one that would replace much of its expansive parking lot with open, green spaces and move many cars into a mid-rise parking garage.

“If you’ve been to Las Vegas, if you’ve been to a number of the suburban casinos, they’re big buildings, and everything is kind of pushed together,” said architect David Manfredi at the Wednesday night public meeting hosted by state officials who must review the plan under the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act.

“Our goal here is to pull the pieces apart, make these individual buildings, create pedestrian ways, create more green space, make all of this frontage very green, all of these spaces very green,” Manfredi said.

The plan would surround the approach to Suffolk Downs from Route 1A with plantings that would return portions of the area to its natural state as a wetland while introducing a lawn-like “meadow” area with a new pedestrian pathway leading to the nearby MBTA station. Trees would shield views of a neighboring field of fuel tanks.

The plan would place the new resort hotel near the southern end of the existing grandstand structure, so that its sweeping, semi-circular glass façade would be the first architectural element seen by visitors.

Behind that building, a new parking structure would replace an existing lot and offset spaces lost by the redevelopment as green space of much of the track’s existing expanse of ground-level parking.

“This Caesars project is going to be the greenest casino facility in the country … if not the world,” said Joe Guziewicz, vice president of design and construction for Caesars Entertainment. “That’s my push to these guys constantly,” Guziewicz said of the development team.

Unlike some past community meetings where casino opponents have far outnumbered its supporters, many of the 100 or so people present on Wednesday praised Suffolk Downs and voiced hearty support for the resort. Even those who raised objections praised the environmental plan and the landscape sketches presented at the meeting.

“These plans really are beautiful, and if Suffolk Downs was building anything other than a casino, I think I would be wowed as well,” said Jessica Curtis, a resident of East Boston’s Wood Island area.

“But the fact is that we’re bringing in something that will have significant impacts on substance use, drug and alcohol addictions, and crime rates in our communities.”

Many spoke of the 2,500 construction jobs and 4,000 permanent jobs that Suffolk Downs predicts the casino would bring to the community. Richard Pedi, a union representative for the Carpenters Local 218 of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council, spoke of the need for jobs to “help people get back on their feet” and to open up the trades to future generations. [Any reasonable person can recognize the overstated projections. Maybe they should guarantee it in writing.]

“It’s a possibility for people from East Boston and Revere and the surrounding communities to join the apprenticeship program,” Pedi said. “All the trades have an apprenticeship program. We have grandchildren, we have children, brothers and sisters that may need to get into a trade. And it’s not only going to be a job for them, it’ll be a career.”

Responding to such statements, Curtis said several people in her family work or have worked in construction trades, and she is sympathetic to the need for jobs in those fields.

“I agree that we need more economic opportunity. I’m just not sure that this is the best fit for our community,” she said.

Curtis and others expressed concerns about increased traffic and how that would affect the precarious air quality in an area that already includes an airport and several industrial sites.

They asked about increased noise, impact of storm-water runoff into local wetlands, added pressures on the racing business that could endanger the lives of horses, and about the safety of casino visitors if Global Petroleum is able to follow through on a plan to carry millions of gallons of ethanol to a nearby facility each week.

But for many who support the casino, those concerns were outweighed by the pressing need for jobs, and the uncertainty of what might happen at the Suffolk Downs site if another type of development were proposed.

“Please, don’t draw the studies out a long time,” said Michael Calder, business agent for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 103. “We need the jobs right now. Our members are hurting. They’ve been hurting for four years.”

For more information, visit the City of Boston Host Community Advisory Committee web site or the Massachusetts Gaming Commission web site.


http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/east_boston/2013/03/east_boston_residents_praise_e.html#

 

Plainridge's Neighbor Unfriendly Plans

As abutters of Plainridge Racecourse, we have been notified that, on June 27th, they will begin a month (or more) of blasting and drilling in our neighborhood.

We attended every Planning Board meeting and hearing about this project in 2010. We were told there would be "some" blasting and drilling. We were never told it would last for a month. We can assure you that the scope of this project was never made clear to the people in our neighborhood.

At the Planning Board hearings, the public was not allowed to talk about slots or any other reason why a failing business that rarely comes close to filling its parking lot would need to build a behemoth garage. That means it was not disclosed or even discussed at the time that Plainridge anticipates 6,534 vehicle trips/day, in and out of that garage, 24/7/365, should they get the slots license (according to the Notice of Project Change filed with MEPA).

Our neighborhood will suffer while the garage is being built. We will suffer the added noise, light, and pollution, every hour of every day, if the slot barn is licensed.

If Plainridge had wanted to, they could easily have placed the garage elsewhere on their 100+ acre property — maybe close to Route One, further from where families actually live. Instead, they chose to build it cheek-by-jowl with our neighborhood. They couldn't have gotten closer if they tried.

If they wanted to, they could have spared us this month of blasting and drilling. If they wanted to, they could have spared us what comes next.

They say they are a "good neighbor." As someone who lives fewer than 250' from the blasting and drilling of construction, to be followed by the noise and stench of 6,500+ vehicle trips per day should a slot barn get licensed, we say "BS."

Mary-Ann Greanier
Wayne Bryant

19 Mirimichi Street
Plainville, MA 02762
508.695.2794

Plainridge's Scam

Secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Richard K. Sullivan Jr

Re: EEA#11431 Plainridge Racecourse Notice of Project Change

Dear Secretary Sullivan:

I am an abutter who lives within 300' of Plainridge Racecourse. I have serious concerns about the noise and light pollution that will come with the proposed project change, especially because, should the slot barn license be granted to Plainridge, the proposed facility is likely to be open for business a punishing 24/7/365. Already, with construction and blasting happening six days a week, we are often forced to keep our windows closed because of the noise, exhaust and dust coming from the site. Our neighborhood is closest to the new garage facility, and so will suffer the greatest impact. (While Plainridge could have chosen to place the garage near Route One, thereby ameliorating much of the impact to our neighborhood, they chose, instead, to tuck it as close to our neighborhood and as far away from Route One as they could. It's hard to fathom that there was not better site for the garage on the 100+ acres they own. Be that as it may...)

In the Notice of Project Change, there is a proposed change of 4,900 vehicle trips/day in and out of Plainridge, for a total of 6,534 vehicle trips/day (http://www.env.state.ma.us/mepa/mepadocs/2012/060612em/nps/npc/11431npc.pdf). That's an average of 272 trips/hour (with some hours being significantly heavier or lighter than others, of course). Combined with the noise of cars in the garage itself — noise which is amplified by the garage structure — those vehicle trips will significantly add to the sound floor of the neighborhood.

Families living on Harness Path, Haynes Road, and Mirimichi Street will be forced to deal with the effects of noise and light coming from those estimated 6,500 vehicle trips/day, coming at all hours of the day and night. Abutters with children are especially vulnerable to the impact of the increased road noise as an ambient stressor for their children.*

Finally, I am concerned about the change in the quality of the air we breathe with the sharp increase in the proposed number of fossil fueled vehicles in our neighborhood. I have asthma. One elderly neighbor has COPD and another is battling cancer; they live in two of the houses closest to the proposed site.

I urge you to use every possible means at your disposal to insure that the people forced to live cheek-by-jowl with this project do not suffer the adverse impact of such an extreme change of use.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Mary-Ann Greanier

19 Mirimichi Street

Plainville, MA 02762

phone 508.695.2794
mobile 508.369.1787



* "Although the predominant health concern of chronic noise exposure is auditory damage, increasing attention is being paid to the nonauditory health effects of noise. The nonauditory effects of noise have been conceptualized in terms of stress, suggesting that chronic noise exposure leads to an overload of stimulation that is experienced as an irritating, annoying stimulus that interferes with relaxation as well as the ability to concentrate (Broadbent, 1971; Evans and Cohen, 1987; Lercher, 1998). The uncontrollability of chronic noise exposure also appears to be a salient aspect of its stressful properties (Cohen et al., 1986; Glass and Singer, 1972). Evidence that noise can function as a stressor includes elevated psychophysiological activation, greater psychosomatic symptoms of anxiety and nervousness, and deficits in motivation indicative of helplessness (Cohen et al., 1986; Evans, 2001; Ising, Babisch, and Kruppa, 1999; Ising and Braun, 2000; Kryter, 1994; Lercher, 1996; Medical Research Council, 1997). It is important to recognize that most of the evidence for these findings comes from individuals with no discernible hearing deficits. Nonauditory effects of noise appear to occur at levels far below those required to damage hearing."

from "Community noise exposure and stress in children"
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109 (3), March 2001