Encore’s failure to pay the City of Everett our in lieu of tax payment on time is an outrage.
Encore’s apparent payment of what they owe the city is another outrage.
What will the mayor do about it?
Nothing.
Why?
He is beholden to the casino and hotel. He has no power over the executives at Encore, and no pull with the folks at the parent, Wynn Resorts. With Steve Wynn out of the picture, the mayor is unable to mitigate against Encore’s unilateral change of policy to pay the state instead of the city.
Now the city must go to the state and ask, or beg, however it works during this time of virus shutdown and curtailed state services, for the money the city needs to run its budget and to provide city services.
First reports indicate the city might receive what it is owed – more than $10 million by the end of August.
However, it is most likely the state will send the payment closer to the end of the year.
“The city must close its books. The payment must be received, or we can’t close our books,” exclaim the geniuses running the city’s financial house of cards.
Is this supposed to move the state to payout what the city is owed more quickly?
Is this how Everett wishes to confront the state, or Encore, for changing the system of payment?
Not only did Encore not make their payments on time, but they changed as well to whom the payments are made.
For the largest “taxpayer” to act in such a way is a terrifying indication of things to come.
In Springfield, where MGM built a casino, he guaranteed host agreement with casino giant MGM promised Springfield $26 million a year.
Now MGM is trying to renegotiate the host agreement.
Our city council and mayor and says it can’t happen here – but it certainly will unless the city takes stern measures to enforce the host agreement.
Neither the mayor, nor his financial chief Eric Demas know the way, this despite the appearance of a panegyric by Demas on the mayor’s Facebook site this weekend.
Demas shows no entrepreneurial or fighting spirit in his piece.
He offers only excuses on top of excuses in a rehash of stale, one dimensional economic history.
The city has spent all its money.
It needs the Encore payment to survive.
The mayor is silent about Encore changing the rules of payment on the city without him knowing about it.
What an embarrassment for the mayor who singlehandedly brought the casino here with a little help from the FBI, the State Police, the US Attorneys Office, former Governor Bill Weld and his employers at Mintz Levin and with the divine intervention of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission.
If the mayor knew about the change and didn’t tell us, this is a worse situation than residents and taxpayers here can imagine. Encore was going to give the city financial security and stability the city has never known.
This is simply, incontestably not the case.