The Decision Of The Century For Everett
By Josh Resnek
WOW!
After more than a year of agony wondering whether or not or when or if or how the casino and hotel was going to open or to open at all comes this monumental decision – to grant Wynn Resorts a gaming license for 15 years.
The only caveat, Wynn Resorts has to write out a check to the State of Massachusetts for $35 million and company president Matt Maddox has to pay a personal fine of $500,000.
Maddox made $24 million in pay last year.
Paying a $500,000 fine to the state will be easier for him to pay than my heating bill for last winter.
The $35 million will be a check written so fast by Wynn Resorts that it is likely to travel here by the speed of light, certainly through an electronic transfer that I bet takes place by Friday.
Thirty-five million to Wynn Resorts is not a lot of money.
It is a pittance, and yet it is the largest single fin ted out to a gaming organization in the United States in the history of casino gambling.
When we get right down to it, what exactly is wrong with a $35 million fine except that it could have been larger!
Think about a $35 million fine.
That is a huge sum of money even by today’s excessive standards. Again, why couldn’t it have ben for more?
The curtain is rising.
The sun is coming up.
A new era is beginning in this city on June 23 – and what an era this should prove to be.
If all goes the way it should, the money coming in will far outweigh the suffering caused by the huge crowds destined to come here, to strangle our streets with enormous amounts of traffic and to literally and physically change the way we live around here.
Taking a quick ride around Santilli Circle will never again be what it is today.
Heading over to Wellington Circle will also be a disaster.
Trying to move quickly from Everett to Charlestown…forget about it. On the other hand, the income could be enormous.
It should be enormous.
The income for the city could be over the top.
In fact, it will be over the top.
If everything goes right, it will be the single greatest economic event in the city’s long history.
Most amazing is how the MGC made all of us wait and to speculate down to the last minute.
Then came the news like an earthquake…everything is going to be OK. What is next, we are left to wonder?
How exactly will all of this play out?
Will it work the way it is supposed to work?
Will there now be more money to spend than ever before in the history of city government?
And will city government manage to spend all of it?
Yes, indeed.
It is hard to imagine the school department ever having to beg again to get out of its underfunded budget.
No infrastructure project will ever again seem too distant or too expensive.
The granting of this license turns the whole show into a spectacle. Gone in an instant were the fears that the license would not be granted. What we will all come to understand is that gaming trumps the law. With gaming, it is the law of necessity that allows it to function because it is so profitable and so important to the city’s financial structure.
The law of necessity is far more important than the law itself, which, had it been followed, would never have allowed Wynn Resorts to obtain this license.
But that was then.
This is now.
Everett’s future is looking far more hopeful than it was just yesterday when this issue of granting a license was hanging in the balance.
WOW!
Everything becomes a reality on June 23 – and what a day that will be!
What an incredible moment in the city’s history it will be.
We will all learn about how good a neighbor the casino and hotel will be.
Amazing, really.
Every handicapper I know had it right – $35 million fine and set to go.
That was the over and the under.
It played out perfectly.
About a kid I know
I know a kid from Chelsea who just passed the Massachusetts Bar and will soon be working as a lawyer, and in all likelihood, as my lawyer!
This kid, who is now 30, graduated from Chelsea High School and went on to Harvard, where he graduated with honors. Going on to Harvard graduating from Chelsea High School is no easy trick. The same can be said of those who go on to Harvard from Everett High School.
He performed plays in high school. He was a baseball star and captain of his team which went to the State Championships for the first time in 35 years. He was popular with his classmates, nearly all of whom were from other cultures and races, speaking English as a second language.
After Harvard, he got a job with the Obama Administration in Washington DC as a speech writer for cabinet members and ambassadors. He stayed in Washington for little over a year before leaving…to go to Harvard Law School.
At Harvard Law School he became the reigning mock trial champion in the United States and Harvard won the championship for the first time in 40 years.
He spent a year getting a Masters degree in law at Cambridge University in England.
Now he’s passed the bar.
He is a young man almost without ego, or as he likes to joke, “I’ve got my ego under control.”
What’s he going to do?
If he has his way, he’s going to work for the indigent in Suffolk County as an appointed lawyer.
He wants to learn the law from the bottom up.
He wants to keep people unable to defend themselves out of jail. He could have gone to New York, to Wall Street or even to a fancy Boston law firm and made a ton of money.
Instead, he is choosing to defend those who don’t have the money to defend themselves.
He has said he would never be a prosecutor.
I am very proud to know this young man.
He’s quite a guy.
He is my son, Joseph Resnek.