$30 million in lieu of tax payments have been made or are Since June 2019 when the doors opened to the Encore Boston Harbor Casino and Hotel in our city, approximately owed to the city treasury.
To date, nearly every million received has been a million spent with little to nothing left to cover the city for a rainy day.
The Encore income package was perceived as panacea for the city’s income difficulties – a dream come true because of the city’s inability to keep spending in line with its income.
Time and events have proven that Encore is not the beginning, nor is it the end of the city’s need for additional cash to meet its obligations.
That being said, it is important to note that Everett will not likely get another chance in our lifetime for another Encore type business in the city.
Therefore, we are suggesting that either the city council or the administration, or both, need to form a committee to oversee the spending of the Encore yearly income package.
The effort should be for such a committee to determine how such a large amount of free income should be saved or put to use to create a city trust fund available for the well-being and benefit of all of Everett’s residents and taxpayers.
The question is being raised justifiably by businessmen and women and by those who believe the city’s spending of the Encore benefit is profligate.
Conservative thinkers believe the city would be better off saving the Encore income or at the very least, the largest amount of the money possible that comes in from Encore instead of immediately spending it.
The committee should be made up of businessmen and women – not necessarily from Everett exclusively – but everyone should be familiar with the city’s finances.
Local bankers should be on this committee. Who better knows about money than Everett’s bankers?
The city needs an “Encore Commission” to oversee all aspects of the casino and hotel income benefits coming in, and more importantly, going out.
The end product might be saving some of that income and causing Everett to have the richest city treasury in Massachusetts.
To spend all of the Encore income as fast as it arrives is bad government.
It is more than that, it is bad economics.
The city needs to reconsider how the Encore money is being squandered.