Thursday, 4:30 PM
Middleborough would receive $11 million a year under new casino deal
(Erik Jacobs for the Boston Globe/file)
The Town of Middleborough would host the state's first casino under a tentative deal reached today between the Board of Selectmen and the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian tribe.
By Sean P. Murphy and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff
The Mashpee Wampanoag Indian tribe sweetened the deal with the town of Middleborough today by agreeing to pay the financially strapped town at least $4 million more a year over the tentative agreement reached last month.
Under an agreement announced this afternoon, the town would receive about $11 million in the first year a casino operates, compared with the $7 million the town and tribe negotiated but did not finalize last month. The deal appears to make Middleborough an almost sure bet to be the home to Massachusetts' first casino, assuming the tribe can win necessary approvals from the state and federal governments.
However, the tribe and town still have to bring the deal to a vote at a Town Meeting, scheduled for Saturday on a high school athletic field, and expected to draw as many as 9,000 people in the town of 22,000 residents.
Middleborough is in Southeast Massachusetts, about 40 miles from Boston and 30 miles from Providence. The tribe has purchased about 200 acres of developable woodlands and has options on another 100 acres.
The agreement, negotiated in all-day sessions over the last five days by representatives of the town Board of Selectmen and their lawyers, adds two new provisions. The first is an escalator clause giving the town a 3.1 percent annual increase. The second is a 4 percent lodging tax on the development's planned 1,500-room hotel, which the tribal and town negotiators project to equal $4 million.
The $7 million base payment plus the lodging tax adds up to the $11 million, according to the person involved in the negotiations.
But the new deal is much less generous to the town than a draft produced earlier this month after many town residents criticized the tentative agreement as not going far enough to compensate the town for the accommodating the millions of expected visitors. Under that revised but ultimately rejected agreement, in addition to the $7 million base payment, the town was to receive 2 percent of gross gaming revenues, which was projected to be as high as $20 million a year, for a total of as much as $27 million a year.
In all the various negotiations, the tribe had agreed to pay for expensive upgrades to the town's roads, bridges, and utilities. The final deal reached today puts that cost at $250 million. In addition, the tribe agreed in the final agreement to pay $2 million for training eight new police officers and 16 new emergency medical technicians, and to purchase two cruisers and two ambulances. The tribe also agreed to fund a program for counseling compulsive gamblers with a $40,000 donation, plus $20,000 a year. An $11 million contribution to the town would represent about 15 percent of the town's annual budget.
By making the deal, the tribe could have the town's support when it seeks approvals from the state and federal governments. Governor Deval Patrick has said he expects to decide whether to support the casino proposal next month.
