Voters will decide whether to allow casino gambling at a horse racetrack in Aurora, and two other locations in the future, with the promise that the taxes raised will funnel $114 million a year to public schools. It’s a high-stakes proposal that has opponents and supporters spending a combined $33 million to get their message out on what would be a state constitutional amendment.
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Statewide proposal would bring massive casino to Aurora
By Quincy Snowdon, Staff Writer
Colorado voters will be getting another crack at bringing craps, cards and spinning cherries closer to home this election day in the form of Amendment 68. The amendment aims to add limited gaming — slots and table games with no single bet higher than $100 — to the current racetrack facility at Arapahoe Park. If the measure passes, it would allow Rhode Island-based company Twin River Casino to construct a 175,000 square foot casino to house the 65 table games and at least 2,500 slot machines the measure calls for.
The bait for bringing this would-be gaming mecca into the Front Range sits behind the fact that the measure is projected to rake in about $114 million annually for a statewide K-12 education fund, on top of an up-front, single payment of $25 million to Colorado schools. That breaks down to an additional $132 annually per K-12 student, and roughly $5.2 million for Aurora Public Schools alone. Those hefty totals would come compliments of a beefy 34 percent tax on all gaming revenue at the proposed casino, which is double the tax rate under which mountain casinos such as Ameristar currently operate.
The “yes” camp — under the moniker “Yes for Better Schools” — claim the measure will generate approximately 1,400 jobs in Arapahoe County and about 1,000 more through peripheral effects across the state, according to an economic report it released last month. In the same report, it estimated that a new casino at Arapahoe Park would have an approximately $418 million annual economic impact on the state economy and generate about $398 million locally.
Although they are projections, those numbers worry officials from mountain casinos in Blackhawk and Central City, many of whom have shoveled millions of dollars toward the “No on 68” campaign in hopes of defeating the measure on Nov. 4. Steve Roark, president of the Colorado Gaming Association, worries that the measure would endanger the roughly 8,000 jobs held by mountain casino employees as well as money for local infrastructure, museums and community colleges those casinos finance through taxes.
“I don’t see why anyone would go to Blackhawk if there’s a huge casino on the fringes of Aurora,” Roark said. “The whole thing is a question of fairness, not competition. It’s designed to make a monopoly for a company in Rhode Island.”
Infrastructure concerns have also arisen outside of the mountains as traffic and road issues have recently become an issue for the measure. Aurora City Councilman Bob Broom attempted to pass a city council resolution condemning Amendment 68 on Sept. 22, claiming that adding gaming to Arapahoe Park would worsen already decrepit infrastructure near the track on East Quincy Avenue and Gun Club Road. Broom claimed that in order to sufficiently prepare those roads for the heavy traffic gaming would generate, approximately $62 million of improvements would need to be made. The resolution failed due to a lack of unanimous city council support, which is required for the council to take an official stance on ballot questions.
The amendment has also seen pushback from the state’s most-populated school district, Denver Public Schools, which passed a resolution against the measure in mid-August citing that its passage would cause confusion over where school funding comes from. The legislation also poses a potential problem for the Cherry Creek School District, which owns a parcel of land adjacent to the proposed casino plot that is tentatively slotted for the construction of a new middle school and high school.
John Taylor Jr., chairman of Twin River Casino said that his company approached Cherry Creek officials long before the measure made the ballot and that they wanted to wait to see what happens on Election Day before engaging in any conversations.
Taylor also said that Twin River is fully willing to fund necessary infrastructure improvements and that the measure’s language was purposely left ambiguous to allow his team to best suit the city’s infrastructure needs. In the final version approved by the Colorado Secretary of State, the amendment allows for the host community to impose a “one-time initial impact fee,” as well as annual impact fees on Twin River, although it does not specify an exact amount.
“We may well be the best host to solve the current traffic problems,” Taylor said.
While the vitality of gaming in Aurora remains to be seen, history is not on its side. Twin Rivers tried to implement a similar measure in 2003, which was defeated and received less than 20 percent of the votes. Last year, voters also dismissed proposed Amendment 66, which called for a $950 million tax hike in the name of education. The co-author of Amendment 68, former State Sen. Bob Hagedorn, said the measure is meant to be a happy medium between 66’s huge tax leap and doing nothing at all.
“This is a compromise, an alternative, not the sweeping, gigantic proposal 66 was,” Hagedorn said. “It’s perhaps a baby step to what K-12 needs in Colorado.”
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I voted YES, and I hope whoever reads this does as well.
I cancelled your vote out.