Reports from last week's Selectmen's Meeting pointed out the conference calls and other communications with 4 other host communities for Penn-owned casinos and slot parlors. Proponents of the slots parlor in Tewksbury have been eager to point out that our own Chief of Police stated that he did not anticipate a problem for his department with regards to the proposed gambling establishment. Like many other residents, I was disappointed that such a recommendation was made on conference calls and discussions with other communities as opposed to being done in the context of a full impact study.
So, since our town officials have refused to provide a comprehensive impact analysis of this facility, we are all left to find what information that we can. Proponents frequently cite Bangor, ME and their Hollywood Casino as a success story, and it was Bangor officials that assured our Chief of Police that there would be no impact on crime here in Tewksbury.
I took to the internet, and downloaded crime statistics for Bangor, ME from 2000 through 2011 from city-data.com (the state has not released statistics available by city yet for 2012). I then went to the homepage of Bangor, ME (http://www.bangormaine.gov/) and downloaded their financial reports since 2008 (all that they had online), and found the 2007 budget numbers embedded in another article. So what do we see...
Figure 1 above shows a significant spike in burglaries, thefts, and robberies from 2005 through 2009. The slot parlor opened near the end of 2005. To their credit, crime fell in 2010 and 2011. So no problem, right? Well actually, look at the red dots on the graph, that is the annual public safety budget from 2007 through 2012. You can see that the public safety budget skyrocketed from less than $14 million in 2007 to approximately $18 million in 2012. Talk about impact!
Figure 2 shows the same budget numbers with annual percentage increases for those years. So from 2006 to 2012, Bangor increased their public safety budget 8%, 5.4%, 7.6%, 0.6%, and 5.9% each year respectively (in blue). I have provided the respective changes in Tewksbury's public safety data for comparison (in red). These are significant increases in any aspect of any municipal budget.
So what would that mean for us? If the proponents of this Tewksbury casino are to be believed, we will be "just like Bangor." So let's apply those percentage increases to our public safety budget starting in 2015. Figure 3 shows the cumalitive budget increase incomparison to the unchanging hosting fee. That represents an increase of our public safety budget from $10.4 million in FY14 (which we just voted on in May) to $13.6 million in FY19. By year 2, the increased public safety budget cost of 1.43 million over those first two years is 43% higher than the hosting fee. By year 5, we will have increased our public safety budget $3.17 million while that hosting fee is still $1 million. So what were we going to use those funds for? It looks like we will need to funnel it into public safety if Bangor truly is a measure of what our future will look like.
Let's pass on this long-shot bet on Tuesday night, and let's get back to building our community in the spirit we can all be proud.
UPDATE: I have added the same crime data for Tewksbury and Lewiston, ME from 2005-2011. Lewiston is a town in south central Maine, with a population very similar to Bangor (36,400 vs Bangor's 32,800), as well as a similar economic and demographic statistics. I have also added average data for the entire country.
