Des Plaines Mayor Matthew Bogusz recently urged his fellow elected officials to staunchly oppose any efforts to increase the number of casinos permitted in the state.
Des Plaines will receive nearly $8.9 million of gaming tax revenue from Rivers Casino this year, city officials said during a presentation at a recent City Council meeting. Per a business development agreement, the state receives $10 million of the total gaming tax revenue generated each year for the first 30 years the casino is in business, while 10 designated benefitting communities in the south and southwest suburbs receive 40 percent of what remains and the city takes the rest, said Dorothy Wisniewski, Des Plaines finance director.
Once the 30-year anniversary of the casino opening has passed, Wisniewski said Des Plaines will split the tax revenue 50-50 with the benefitting communities.
Since opening its doors in the summer of 2011, Rivers Casino, the beneficiary of the state’s 10th casino license, has generated roughly $85 million worth of gaming tax revenue, Wisniewski said. Des Plaines has received about $30.2 million of the total tax funds, she said.
In 2012, officials passed an ordinance requiring the city use the extra revenue to pay off city debt, fund capital infrastructure projects and enlist lobbyist services aimed at preventing gaming expansion, said City Manager Michael Bartholomew.
Bartholomew added that revenue is spent on a two-year lag – meaning that the gaming tax revenue generated in 2013 will be used to pay for capital projects this year.
Over the course of this year, the city plans to spend $4.3 million on drainage improvements, $2.5 million on new water infrastructure beneath River Road and about $5.5 million to build a pipeline from the city’s Central Road pumping station to the Northwest Water Commission’s Des Plaines headquarters, officials said. The latter project is part of an effort to secure an alternative and cheaper water source. Once complete, the city expects to save thousands of dollars per day on the cost of water.
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Bartholomew said that later this year, the city will debate how to spend the roughly $8.9 million worth of gaming tax revenue generated in 2014. Additionally, food and beverage tax, licensing and compliance fees and fines and property tax add about $1 million to the total revenue the city is set to receive, he said.
“If you look back at years previous, we typically spend about $4.5 million on capital infrastructure, and I would say, in the past, the lion share of that is (funded) via debt, not via cash,” said Bogusz.
“We are investing almost five times as much in 2015 than we were in 2011 and it’s cash, not debt,” he added.
But Bogusz cautioned that this funding source would be threatened by any state expansion of gaming.
“If you’re reading the newspaper these days and watching any local news, you are hearing there are increased tensions placed on the state,” he said.
The state is always looking for a new revenue source, Bogusz said, but it’s in Des Plaines’ best interest to stay opposed to gaming expansion.
“We need to make sure to continue to stand against it,” he said.