Dear Mr. Patrick,

You are of course aware of the proposed Middleboro casino. What you may not be aware of is the lack of due process and input our citizens have had in this process. The rush to a town meeting vote bypassed any public discussion. There was no pro versus con arguments and no public analysis of the document. In fact many of our citizens saw the agreement for the first time while standing in the hot sun on July 28th - a mere five days after it was released to the public.

Simply put, the process was designed to eliminate citizen discussion and reasoned analysis of the agreement or even the very idea of a large casino.

Since that vote, documents reveal that Middleboro did not do it's due diligence in assessing the impact of this facility. Most departments only provided "impact estimates" that were stock manpower formulas for current needs. This deal will barely cover the costs of current needs and does nothing to provide for the financial burden that will come with servicing the casino. The rush to town meeting was done for two reasons.

1. To prevent opposition from building any further
2. To get a favorable result that would sway you as you ponder the decision to allow gambling in Massachusetts.

Our calls and emails to our state and national Representatives and Senators have yielded little more than canned replies or silence.

We ask that you meet with representatives of our group at a time and place of your choosing.

We also appeal to you make the only sensible choice with regards to gambling in Massachusetts by not allowing class 3 gambling in our state. If your casino study committee did their jobs correctly, you now know that state revenue from casinos will largely come at the expense of revenue we are already getting in other parts of the economy. Casinos create nothing and only cause an economic reshuffling of the deck. You also know that the severe social harms that come with casinos will result in costs that offset any perceived economic gain. Representative Bosley has been studying this issue for years. Listen to him. He's right.

A shallow analysis will focus on the millions of dollars the state will get from casino gambling. A complete analysis will factor in the loss of tax revenue from other parts of the economy and the real costs that we will be paying associated with increases in gambling addiction.

Do the right thing. Not the politically easy thing.

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