Published November
2003
Tulalips:
$200M
casino revenue not enough
By
Cathy Logg
Herald Writer
The Tulalip Tribes’
new casino is expected to make close to $200 million this year. But tribal
officials say that isn’t enough.
Some projects paid
for by casino profits likely will be put on hold or reprioritized because
of overprojections of gambling revenue, Les Parks, a tribal board member
and chairman of the business committee, said in October.
Two projects most
likely to be delayed are the 116th Street overpass on I-5 and a hotel-convention
center planned adjacent to the new casino at Quil Ceda Village.
The tribe agreed
to pay for the design work on the new overpass and to fund construction
if the state and federal government don’t come up with the money. That
hasn’t changed, but it could be years away now, Parks said.
Construction of the
hotel-convention center also won’t occur as quickly as planned, due in
part to a study the tribe commissioned. The study of hotel occupancy rates
indicated that a new hotel isn’t needed yet, said John McCoy, Quil Ceda
Village general manager and a state representative.
He recommended to
the board that the hotel not be opened until 2008, although no decision
has been made, McCoy said. The Tulalips first need to work with others
to market Snohomish County and increase tourism, he added.
Tribal officials
have met monthly with the state Department of Transportation on the overpass
project. The tribe is funding the $2 million design project and had hoped
a new overpass could be completed in 2005.
“For the past two
months, the design process has been slowing down,” said Methqual Abu-Najem,
the state’s project engineer.
Parks said the tribe
is seeking local, state and federal funds to help pay for the project.
If the Tulalips have to pay for the entire project, “it would be years
down the road,” he added.
The Tulalips also
have had to deal with a mandate by tribal members, who voted two years
ago to take a $10,000-per-person, one-time payout from casino profits
for the tribes’ 3,600 members.
On Oct. 25, tribal
members agreed not to make the payout this year after tribal leaders argued
that to do so would lead to severe cuts in programs. But they voted to
add $1,000 to the $2,000 annual checks members are scheduled to receive
in November.
The tribes' constitution
requires it to meet all financial obligations before making per-capita
payments, according to Parks.
Tribal General Manager
Linda Jones said the Tulalips are dealing with large debt payments.
“We’re able to make
them. We’re making a little more than we did in the old casino, but in
the old casino we owned the building,” she said.
Parks said casino
revenues are fine.
“They have met the
projections the tribe had outlined (with its bankers). We are meeting
or exceeding those numbers,” Parks said.
The problem, he said,
is that “overzealous” casino managers inflated the revenue projections,
contrary to what departmental staff were saying.
“It hasn’t hurt us
that much. It caused us to go back and rework our current budgets, something
that we do regularly,” Parks said.
In mid-September,
the Tulalips convened a general council on a petition for a vote of no
confidence in Chuck James, the casino’s chief operating officer.
“It was a close vote,”
Parks said, but James prevailed.
But that vote had
nothing to do with the revenue projections, Parks said. Tribal officials
described the cause as philosophical differences in how the casino was
run.
Even though James
survived that vote, he was fired by the board in early October. James
said casino employees were told he was fired because casino revenues and
morale were down.
The Tulalips now
have received a petition calling for a vote of no confidence in the tribes’
chairman, Herman Williams Jr.
Some tribal members
have complained that not enough casino revenue goes to tribal services.
When Parks was elected
to the board in 1996, the casino contributed $8 million to tribal operations,
he said. In 2002, more than $50 million went to tribal services, allowing
many programs to expand and many others to be created, he said.
Among the new programs,
the Tulalips now build new homes for four tribal elders each year, and
about four years ago, the tribe purchased a new computer system for every
tribal home, both on and off the reservation.
The tribe is about
to issue a recall on those computers, which will be replaced with new
ones, Parks said.
The Tulalips packaged
the casino financing with construction of a new health clinic, a wastewater
treatment plant, and roads and utilities in Quil Ceda Village, Parks said.
That was the first
of many project phases. In addition to the business park package, the
Tulalips have identified $450 million in projects over the next 10 years,
he said.
Among the others
are the hotel and convention center, an upscale mall, a theme and water
park, an amphitheater and a K-12 education campus.
The Tulalips are
close to signing an agreement with the Chelsea Group to develop the mall,
McCoy said.
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