Casino kids will bite county school budgets

By DAVID HULSE

MONTICELLO, NY — Indian gambling casinos will bring thousands of new jobs and millions of new dollars for the local economy, but the expenses will increase with the new revenues, county officials told local school superintendents last week.

Based on what the county terms as conservative projections for growth, three casinos could increase annual local school budgets by $18 million to $24 million; the difference depends on how many of the employees buy homes and become taxpayers.

That figure does not include new capital costs to provide classrooms for a projected 3,750 new students, an anticipated one-third increase in Sullivan’s existing schools enrollment. In terms of the $29 million cost of the new Sullivan-West school, additional new building costs at the same ratio of cost per student could exceed $83 million.

County figures only included students from families of casino employees. It does not include or project any additional costs of students of new families drawn to the county by associated or spin-off casino growth.

The legislature last week laid out the most easily documented of its impact claims, impacts on local schools, using projection projections prepared by gaming committee member Gerry Skoda.

The presentation was a response to critics who claimed the county inflated impacts and Sullivan’s need to document claims for the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), said legislative chair Leni Binder.

Gambling supporters fear a new study that legislators are discussing will further lengthen the approval process, but the BIA is already calling for more extensive environmental impact studies to be completed by the casino applicants.

Claiming the county is blocking a deal for a Cayuga casino at Monticello Raceway, the Village of Monticello has threatened legal action.

Binder said Sullivan County has notified the BIA that it does not believe that the Cayuga’s $5 million benefits package is in the best interests of the county. Sullivan already has cut two $15 million host benefit packages with the St. Regis Mohawks and the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans. County officials are concerned that the Cayuga’s getting a lower figure will undermine these agreements.

Binder said that even if the existing agreed-upon payments were going solely to the schools, and were not shared by county, town and village governments, the dollars would not cover new school costs.

School administrators were strongly advised to petition BIA with their concerns about the casino projects costs.

Binder admitted the size of the numbers are frightening and said she would make no attempt to put a positive spin on it, but they are also a cost of doing business.

“I use an analogy. It’s like winning an $80,000 car in a contest and learning that there are $20,000 due in taxes.”

She says that these projects are a rare exception to the rule in that the community is getting an opportunity to mitigate issues before a major enterprise arrives. “On the other hand, if gaming were legalized, none of this would be necessary because all of this would be taxable.”