At
Casino Facts complains about the draft agreement.
They say:
"$250 million in infrastructure. I'm not too excited by this since
it's mostly stuff the casino needs to come online. Without the casino,
Middleboro should be able to handle it's own infrastructure like every
other town in the state."
Not too excited? These infrastructure improvements improve the
miserable traffic situation at Rte 44, allow us to make profit from
selling them gas and electricity, increase our water supply and allow
us to improve our fire department. Those things benefit all of us,
not just the Resort.
They also complain about future costs:
"7 million per year that will increase by 3.1% a year. We don't know
if there are any strings attached to the increase. We do know that the
FinCom - the finance committee has projected our budget to increase by
8.6% a year based on the last 10 years of budget data. So that has our
payment decreasing in value since it's increase lags our budget
increase by 5.5%."
So Middleboro has projected needs and the Resort money won't solve all
of them. Note that these needs have nothing to do with the Resort:
those are budget increases we need anyway. So the Wampanoag money
won't solve every problem we can every imagine: is that a reason to
reject it?
It's not just 3.1%, either: it's the lower of 3.1% or the CPI
increase. As usual, CasinoFacts doesn't take note of the
"inconvenient" facts.
This deal gives us a great deal of money. Will it solve every problem
we'll ever have? Of course not, but it does give us a running start.
The resort itself can be the seed that brings more economic benefit,
but even those revenues may not give us everything we need: there's
lots of hard work still to be done, but you don't throw this away just
because it doesn't pave our streets with gold and let every citizen
retire in luxury. This is a good deal! We need it!
Folks, the large lady at the front of the stage is singing very loudly
right now. She's singing that we want this deal, we need this deal,
and you'd have to be crazy not to see that. Vote YES on the 28th for
Middleboro's future!
--
Tony Lawrence
