Thursday, July 12, 2012
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Committee to recommend allowing video gambling in Lincoln

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[July 12, 2012]  Tuesday evening the ordinance committee of the Lincoln City Council had an early meeting to continue discussions on street-side parking issues in the city of Lincoln.
However, the gallery was filled with folks who were there to talk about another important issue for the city: legalized video gambling.

At last week's meeting of the council, it was mentioned that the video gambling issue was going to have to be addressed by the council. This had originally come up at the June 26 meeting when Alderwoman Marty Neitzel and several others reported receiving calls from Shawn Taylor of Logan Lanes asking that the city revisit the issue. On that night, ordinance committee chair Tom O'Donohue was absent.

Last week, when O'Donohue said he wanted to have a committee meeting to address the parking problems, the video gambling was brought up, and he said, yes, it was something that needed to be addressed.

However, Tuesday night, O'Donohue wasn't expecting the group that arrived. Before the meeting he advised them that the first purpose of the meeting was parking and that they would move on to video gambling if time allowed.

Time did allow for approximately 20 minutes of discussion on the topic before the ordinance meeting had to adjourn for the regular committee of the whole meeting.

When O'Donohue turned the subject over to gambling, Taylor was there to address the council. He said he had been selected to speak for a group of business and club owners who felt that for the good of their businesses, the city should permit the legalized gaming machines.

Taylor began by talking about the fact that several communities around Lincoln, such as Mason City and Mount Pulaski, have already approved video gaming. He also noted it will be legal in the unincorporated areas of Logan County. He emphasized that this meant the Elks Lodge can have the legalized gaming machines while Logan Lanes cannot, even though they are only about a mile from each other.

Taylor said this left businesses such as his and others that are inside the city limits at a disadvantage when competing for business.

Taylor had statistics regarding the possible revenues for the city of Lincoln. He said he had taken the figures from the Illinois gaming website and they indicated that at a rate of 5 percent of all revenues from the machines, the city of Lincoln could take in $270,000 annually from legalized gambling. However, he also said he thought the number was too high and personally estimated the city would see revenues in the area of $135,000 annually.

He noted that there are currently 24 businesses that would be eligible to apply for the gaming license, but he believes only 15 or 16 actually would.

Taylor said he felt the community would dictate by patronage whether or not the machines stayed in Lincoln.

"If the community doesn't like this, they won't play," he said. "If they don't play, the machines will go away."

He also told the council that time was an issue in getting the machines into Lincoln. Currently there is a backlog of applications awaiting approval on the state level. Taylor said the state won't look at a Lincoln business application until the city approves this, and every day more applications are pouring into the state. The applications are being approved on a first-come, first-served basis. If and when the city of Lincoln would approve the machines, local businesses would go to the bottom of the backlog.

To help expedite the process, Taylor said he had an attorney look at the city ordinance as it is now and write an amended ordinance for the city to approve. If city attorney Blinn Bates endorses that document, then the city will not have to go through the process of voting on the writing of an ordinance; they can simply adopt what has been given to them.

During discussion, the point was made that in order for the city to earn $270,000, a total of $5,000,000 would have to be spent by consumers on video gaming. Mayor Keith Snyder, who opposes the machines, emphasized that meant $5,000,000 lost by Lincoln and Logan County residents.

The breakdown of the revenues received from video gaming is 5 percent to the municipality, 35 percent to the business owner, 35 percent to the machine owner and 25 percent to the state.

Taylor was asked if he knew how many machine owners there are in Illinois. With help from a member of the audience, he responded that there are currently 73 companies in Illinois that will lease the machines to businesses such as his.

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Alderman David Armbrust spoke up, saying he was not necessarily against businesses already in Lincoln having the machines, but what worried him was that there would be businesses popping up for the sole purpose of gambling. He didn't want to see every empty storefront turn into a video gaming room.

However, Taylor reminded the council that with the exception of truck stops, the gaming license can only be issued to businesses that have a liquor license. He also asked Snyder how many licenses were still available in the city; to which Snyder said eight to 10.

Alderwoman Marty Neitzel said she felt that the city was going to have to allow the machines. She noted that with video gaming being everywhere else in the county, it would be easy for people to leave Lincoln to go gaming. She said that would cause harm to the businesses in town and she didn't want to do that.

Alderwoman Jonie Tibbs agreed.

The ordinance committee consists of O'Donohue, Neitzel, Tibbs, Melody Anderson and Jeff Hoinacki. Anderson was absent for the evening. Tibbs and Neitzel supported recommending to the full council that the ordinance be changed, but Hoinacki was hesitant to go along with them.

Hoinacki is opposed to the video gambling, but he also noted that at the Tuesday night meeting, the only ones present were those in favor of the machines. He said in the past the city had heard from opponents, and he felt those people had the right to come back and speak again before a vote was taken.

Alderwoman Stacy Bacon noted that Taylor had said time was of the essence for local businesses. Because of that, she wasn't interested in seeing the process dragged out.

O'Donohue said he, too, wanted to be fair to everyone. He didn't want to push this through without giving everyone a chance to comment. At the same time he understood Taylor's request to make a decision soon.

In the end, a decision was made to recommend that the council approve video gambling within the city limits and adopt the amended ordinance provided by Taylor. The recommendation will be placed on next Monday's voting agenda.

However, it won't be voted on until July 24.

On that date there will be a special meeting of the ordinance committee at 6 p.m. The public is once again invited to attend this meeting and speak about the gaming ordinance. Immediately after the committee meeting, there will be two public hearings, then a reconvened session of the July 16 voting session.

During the voting session, video gambling will be on the voting agenda. However, if the council is not prepared to vote, they have the option of tabling the motion to a future date.

NOTE: Mayor Keith Snyder also provided four full pages of information about video gaming. Those pages are provided in an accompanying story, "Snyder: The economic impact of video gambling."

[By NILA SMITH]

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