Mayor Bill Laforet Is Concerned Whether North Jersey Has the Infrastructure to Handle an Orange County Casino
New Yorkers are debating the merits of casino gambling this week. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the state panel which will decide this fall who receives the casino gaming licenses has been holding town hall meetings. Those meetings took place in Albany, Poughkeepsie, and Ithaca.
New Jersey Mayor Raises Concerns
The people in those communities were not the only ones in attendance. One New Jersey mayor made the visit to see how officials in the neighboring state handle their business. He also wanted to see what New Yorkers were saying on the gambling issue. Mainly, he wanted to see if the traffic in his city is going to become more congested than it already is.
Bill Laforet is the mayor of Mahwah, New York. When people living in New York City want to drive into Orange County, they often drive through Mahwah. Mayor Laforet is concerned, because his city doesn’t have the infrastructure to support the kind of traffic which already flows through Mahwah. If a casino is placed in Orange County–a distinct possibility–the town’s traffic situation could become a massive problem for people on both sides of the state boundary.
Infrastructure Must Be Improved
When he rose to speak about his concerns, Bill Laforet said, “You can’t roll the dice before you get through Mahway. Our economic growth is stifled. You cannot roll the dice before you get through Mahwah and fulfill your responsibility to fix the road infrastructure. There are currently eight lanes of highway traffic going into two lanes.”
Laforet wanted to make the leaders present aware that an official discussion would take place in the near future on the traffic issue. He described this meeting as a traffic conference. Laforet added, “At the end of this month we will be holding a traffic conference which we’ll pull together, the DOT and all the politicians who will want to weigh in on this problem.”
Contaminating the Water Supply
That isn’t the only potential issue. He says the area water supply could be adversely affected by casino construction. Laforet said he was concerned with “drawing the water from the (Ramapo River) Aquifer and transporting the waste to the Hudson River. You will essentially dusk down the river’s basin.”
The mayor was not the only person concerned about the impact on the aquifer and local drinking water. Dena Steele, a resident of Tuxedo, told the panel, “Vehicles filling the 8,000 parking lot will deposit, litter, pollute along the roadways. All of that will be washed off into the Ramapo river compromising water quality.”
New York Casino License Process
This fall, a final decision will be reached on the casino gaming licenses. Sixteen different entertainment and real estate developers placed bids on the licenses. The panel was given the authority to offer up to four licenses, which will be spread throughout three regions of New York state: the Hudson River Valley, the Catskills, and the Southern Tier/Finger Lakes region. The panel cannot license more than 2 casinos per region, but they also have the right of refusal on all 16 licenses. In other words, one of the regions might not receive a casino, while the panel has the right to announce no licensing whatsoever. Market saturation is a legitimate reason not to open a casino which is going to fail. That’s what Mark Gearan, the chairman of the New York Gaming Commission, recently said.
New York approved these licenses at a time when the northeaster gaming market is having troubles. Atlantic City has seen 4 of its 12 casinos close this year, with a fifth casino set to close by November 13, if no buyer can be found. Still, the legislature wanted to build casinos in the upstate areas, to help struggling local economies. The announcement that a license might be approved for Orange County, only 50 miles from New York City, brought complaints and hand-wringing from citizens in the other parts of the state, who believe such a plan undercuts the viability of potential gaming venues in their community.
New York’s gaming regulators might be concerned about a plan gaining momentum in New Jersey to license and build a casino in North Jersey, which would be across the Hudson River from New York City. If such a building is built and all of New York’s casinos are hours away from the Big Apple, gaming officials might believe that New Jersey will be undercutting those businesses–not Orange County.
