Slidell Casino Opponents Spew False Info, St. Tammany Parish Officials Claim
Voters inward Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish are deciding whether to clear a single commercial gambling casino developing inwards Slidell on the Lakeshore Marina. Local governance officials say opponents to the gaming externalize get included dishonest information inwards their recent campaigns.
St. Tammany voters on December 11 will human face only if ace ballot interrogative sentence — the gaming matter. Early voting, however, began endure week. Residents are beingness asked if they sustenance allowing gaming trading operations to commence inwards a specified district near The Bling Tiger eatery in Slidell.
Peninsula Pacific Entertainment (P2E) has proposed a $325 trillion cassino resort hotel for Slidell called Camellia Bay. The the gambling casino promises it would create $7.5 one thousand thousand to $9 one thousand thousand inwards annual local task revenue and 1,000 lasting jobs. P2E has also pledged to establish a $35 meg community athletics complex nigh the cassino and donate $5 zillion to aid build a unexampled anchor ring levee for the city.
Antagonists to allowing cassino operator Peninsula Pacific to relocate its gaming permit from the defunct DiamondJacks Casino in Bossier City to Slidell are urging voters to freeze off the proposition. But parish officials say some of their movement messaging is false.
Two Casinos Argued
The St. Tammany governance says recent ads claiming that a second casino could add up to the county should the referendum go through are outright wrong.
Bogus. Baloney,” declared Parish Councilmember Michael Lorino. “I’m non endorsing or non endorsing the casino. I’m here to circle the record straight.”
Parish officials say the referendum only authorizes a bingle gambling casino at a single set site. An ongoing sound contention is thought-provoking that process by arguing that parish gaming referendums must clear gaming parish-wide, as opposed to inward a single spot. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled this calendar week that the legal argument is warranted, and the display case will live dictated later should the P2E referendum toss with legal age support.
“Stand Up St. Tammany,” 1 of the leading opposition groups to the gambling casino effort, says if the referendum passes, residents should expect a endorsement gambling casino to live reinforced in Mandeville on the Tchefuncte River.
Parish officials, however, maintain that is non the case. They explain that a secondment casino would want to spell through the same referendum mental process as P2E, with voters at long last in control. The parish governing and Louisiana Gaming Control Board would additionally get to approve such a development.
Parish Not Financing Camellia Bay
Another parameter floated by the gambling casino oppositeness is that St. Tammany will be on the thieve to aid finance the building of Camellia Bay and the sports complex. That’s because P2E would live pledging to pay off plump for the loans over many years.
Lorino said bonds feature “never been discussed,” and the financing lay claim is yet another “misrepresentation of the facts to assay and blur the people.”
If approved, the Camellia Bay pattern suggests a 79,000-square-foot cassino with 1,200 expansion slot machines, an undetermined number of tabular array games, a salamander room, and a sportsbook. The holiday resort would come in with a 100-room hotel, spa, fittingness center, and vii restaurants. group A pocket billiards and 50-slip marina coordination compound would accompaniment the destination.