Robert Band, president of Framingham-based Perini Corp., the casino industry's go-to contractor, estimated it would take between 1,000 and 2,000 construction workers about 30 months to build a casino like the one the Wampanoags are planning in Middleborough. He said Perini is now building the $3 billion Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, which includes a high-rise 3,000-room hotel. Construction jobs peaked at 2,600, Band says. It would, indeed, take some fancy new math to get the three casinos the governor wants to add up to 30,000 construction jobs. The Great Exaggerator, by Steve Bailey, Boston Glob Columnist 01/30/2008

I can tell you are on CRAC Brian by your halucinationary tendencies.  "Regular basis?"  When was the last time you or the town talked to the tribe?  Only 2 months ago you and the Middleboro Five were all wondering where the heck the tribe was.  They ought to rename the Mashpee Wampanoaqs the "Hekawi."  If anyone old enough to remember F-Troop, will remember that the Hekawis were once Apache who got lost and asked some settlers, "Where the heck are we?".  The name (We're the Hekawi) stuck ever since.  

“We don't know where they are. There's been no conversation or dialogue with the new chair, we just got the check from him,” - Selectman Patrick E. Rogers, 12/2007

The casinos have “created social and economic devastation” that has led to 20 percent of the city’s small businesses going “belly up.”

Or this from Michigan State Se. Alan Cropsey:

“This really is taking money out of the local area and putting it into the casino owners’ pocket,” Cropsey said, adding that it’s “foolish” for a government to rely on gambling revenue.

Learn from the mistakes of others Gov.  And, that goes for you Middleborough Board of Selectmen.  Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

The complex would bring in thousands of new workers, pour thousands of their children into local schools, hurt the water supply, local businesses and the environment, and cram as many as 50,000 more cars a day onto log-jammed local highways.

Nancy Yeatts, Task Force Chair, Lakeville BOS, she is a no non-sense woman.  She is no pushover, outspoken and disciplined.  She doesn't take crap from punks.  Aggressive, yes, to the childlike Ruth Geoffroy, Middleboro town planner who came to a task force meeting waving her hand and shouting like Arnold Horshack ("Oo...Oo"). She kept trying to disrupt the meeting to get her own word in, "I want to join the task force.  Why can't I join the task force?"  Nancy would have nothing to do with it.  Ruth got so disruptive the police had to be called in, but Ruth left peacefully.

Patrick Rogers, Middleboro Selectman, would come to the meetings after Ruth's rejection.  But for some stupid reason, he would never announce he was coming, never ask to be on the agenda, never.  How high and mighty can he get?  People of any opposition in Middleboro are gaveled to silence at their BoS meetings.  "I have information the task force needs.  Please let me on the task force."  Well, Pat, if you want to be heard and have your say, ask to be invited first (which you finally did) or just sit and wait until the end like the rest of us common folk to ask a question or make a statement.  You say you have so much information, well, just give it to them then.  You don't need to be there to inform people.  Talk is cheap.

Pat would never even stay long enough to know all that has been discussed and since Hal's lights aren't on, they haven't read the task force's lists of concerns to the governor.  Task force members go over this stuff all the time.  Nancy is well versed in the environmental issues and Steve Smith of SRPEDD knows more about traffic impacts than anyone.  Pat, go back to your BoS and... Hal, crawl back into your casino friend hole.

The following was published as a letter to the editor
in the 1/10/08 Middleboro Gazette with their title
"Casino Task Force members seen as aggressive, uniformed."

According to an article in today's Middleboro Gazette, the Regional Task Force on Casino Impacts, a group composed of officials representing 18 towns in southeastern Massachusetts with the notable exception of Middleboro (see "Still looking for a seat at the table", from the Dec. 27, 2007 Gazette) intends to "send at least one representative to all federal and state hearings and will aggressively be involved in the process" of the land into trust application.

That quote comes from the chair of the task force, Nancy Yeatts, whose aggression in meetings has been directed against Middleboro's town planner Ruth Geoffroy and Selectman Patrick Rogers. Mr. Rogers was voted by the Middleboro Board of Selectmen to attend the task force meetings and ask to be seated as a regular member.

It will be interesting to note how they respond if anyone from the Bureau of Indian Affairs asks them why their task force has excluded the very town where the casino is to be located.

It's not 40B affordable housing, it's not Disney World, It's an indian casino

The Gazette reports that one of the task force members, Acushnet selectman David Wojnar, said he was concerned over the lack of local control over the project. He wants to know more about it from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He's quoted as follows:

"I'd like the feds to walk us through it step by step, so we won't be surprised. In my opinion it's basically a 40B for casinos. If the state and local officials don't have the ability to regulate it, it's a dangerous proposition. We could end up with a Disney World in our backyard with no say."

I hope the other members of the regional task force aren't as uniformed as Mr. Wojnar is about indian casinos on sovereign land. Anyone who has been following this story and made an effort to be knowledgeable about tribal casinos is well aware that they are nothing like 40B housing developments and that they bear only the slightest superficial resemblance to Disney World.

It doesn't take a leap of the imagination to get a good idea of what the Middleboro casino will look like and how it will function. All one has to do is take a trip to Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun.

I have to wonder whether the only people who will end up taking this group seriously are its own members.

The defining moment however, for me, as an outsider looking in, was that evening when a member of that same Casino Impact Study Group brought up, for the first and last time, the fact that the town of Bridgewater might have some valid concerns - to which another member stated, with a roll of her eyes and a wave of her hand, that she didn’t "give a damn about Bridgewater.”

Within minutes (of opening session), lawmakers in the House and Senate were introducing bills to allow round-the-clock gambling at both Newport Grand and the Twin River slot parlor and track in Lincoln, and citing the state's financial plight as a justification.

"The 20,000 new jobs, as advocated by the governor is, in fact, not 20,000 new jobs but the replacement of 20,000 jobs that are currently located in other areas that would lose jobs." - William Zammer, vice-chairman of The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce board and the owner of Coonamessett Inn in Falmouth and two other restaurants on the Cape.

From the Cape Cod Times.  Their main objections are as follows:

The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce's position statement against casino gambling in Massachusetts cites the following major reasons:

1) We have both a year-round and seasonal labor shortage that fails to meets our current regional labor needs. A casino will exacerbate our labor shortage.

2) The casino's location within 25 miles of Cape Cod will draw visitors and travel and tourism dollars away from our economy; and

3) Our infrastructure is not prepared to accommodate a casino. ... The impact of a neighboring casino would only compound issues related to wastewater treatment, lack of affordable housing, traffic flow and congestions concerns and increasing local property taxes.

We have been saying this all along, casinos are not good for a sustained and growing economy.