They were against it before they were for it.
As the month of this past February wound down, the Fife City Council was unanimously thumbs up in its opposition to new casinos. Now in recent days – almost exactly eight months later – gambling is A-OK if located in AAA-rated hotels.
Fife, “city staff, committee members and elected officials researched and discussed how gambling centers should fit within the city’s vision,” wrote Kari Plog, staff reporter for the Tacoma News Tribune October 22.
Gambling centers fit within the city’s vision? Evidently, provided they’re located in “quality” hotels.
Fife has standards after all.
No more elderly women robbed of their jackpot outside Fife casinos. No more 20-somethings dumping water into five slot machines at a bingo hall in Fife after losing all their money.
No more because Fife city leaders envision nice places.
As for gamblers who don’t act nice – losers, and those who rob winners especially old ladies – the message appears to be: go somewhere else. Maybe “the two tribal gaming businesses located in the city limits — the Emerald Queen Casino and BJ’s Bingo” which “won’t be affected by the change. Enterprises owned by the Puyallup Tribe of Indians and tribal members are not subject to city regulations.”
“As the city looks to increase economic development,” via upscale hotels-slash-casinos, who, exactly, are most likely to fork over the dough – tourists? Have you been to Fife?
Their promo reads, “Fife has the best gaming in the Northwest! With plenty of casinos and gaming, there is always something to do.”
Book your flight today.
The website needs to be updated however given one of the fun attractions – Freddie’s – isn’t fun anymore. Fun Freddie’s in Fife failed. Two years ago.
‘Hope springs eternal’ and ‘if you build it they will come’ and other Fife city fathers’ foolish fantasies actually fly in the face of what unites top city planners: “Urban casinos are counterproductive to economic health.”
Not only will it predominantly be local low-rollers most apt to stay and spend in Fife’s non-destination casino-hotels thus merely recirculating money “around within a region (with) no effect on a metropolitan area’s economy,” but as Economist Richard Florida declares, “casino building is city-ruining of the highest order. Virtually every serious study that has ever been done of the economic impacts of casinos shows that their costs far exceed their benefits.”
And as for making casinos convenient – especially when couched within hotels, even “three-diamond quality” hotels, where gamblers can thus be kept as long as possible separating them from their money – how does that equate with city leaders’ responsibility to be stewards of the quality – speaking of quality – of the community’s future?
It doesn’t.
“Consider the irony,” wrote Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey in an article entitled “Beating the Odds” in which they quote Michael Kelly of the Washington Post:
“Here is the government, essentially breaking the. . .social contract – the agreement by which the people submit to being governed, in trust that those who govern them will act in their benefit. Instead, the government is actively seeking to legitimize a vice that destroys people and wrecks homes. For government to encourage – and even profit by – such self-destructive behavior is, as Kelly puts it, ‘a profound betrayal of every value there ever was’.”
