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land into Indian trust
By Michael Holtzman
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Aug 29, 2010 @ 09:40 PM
Last update Aug 30, 2010 @ 12:24 AM
FALL RIVER — Mayor Will Flanagan is stepping up efforts to support the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s application for federal land sovereignty for the 300-acre tract the city agreed to sell the tribe if the state legalized gambling this year.
He’s calling the Mashpee’s proposed destination casino the city’s “No. 1 development priority” and one that warrants taking bold steps.
“This is not a bridge to nowhere or a folly. This is a $500 million project,” Flanagan said.
Flanagan is taking this tact while the City Council has called for reviewing the use of the undeveloped 300 acres in the northern sector off a new Route 24 interchange after the Legislature and Gov. Deval Patrick failed to agree upon legalized gambling during its 2010 session that ended a month ago.
With legalization not appearing imminent, Flanagan formalized the alternative route he’s backing for what he says is the best chance to add thousands of jobs and boost the local economy.
“I ask that you expeditiously and favorably review the tribe’s land in trust application,” Flanagan wrote U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.
He noted the Mashpee tribe amended its 2007 land trust application to include Fall River. The tribe did that in mid-July.
“Development of that land that the tribe is seeking to have placed in trust will provide the good jobs that are so desperately needed in this area. In addition, revenue that will be provided to the city through an intergovernmental agreement will allow us to fund the public safety, education and infrastructure projects that are so important to the health of this city and the surrounding region,” reads the letter Flanagan wrote Aug. 17 and shared last week.
The issue eliciting the most questioning has been Flanagan’s continued prioritization of the 300-acre site for gambling instead of as a biotechnology and life sciences park with the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth building an anchor test facility with state-approved funding.
Instead of using that state forest land sold to the RDA for industry — after compromises with environmental groups — the administration has negotiated with the university for an alternative bio-park site.
UMass officials said they plan in early September to decide on a location between the Flanagan administration’s alternative Riverfront Business Park in Freetown and a second SouthCoast proposal at the New Bedford Business Park in that city.
Each plan provides 4 acres and a $3 million loan for the anchor facility, with another 50 acres for biomanufacturing expansion.
FROED would purchase and take title to the nearby Freetown acreage, Flanagan said.
According to RDA Chairman William Kenney, his authority received a legal recommendation that it cannot buy land outside the city, such as the adjacent Freetown acreage.
“Once UMass makes their announcement to locate in Greater Fall River,” Flanagan said, “it may prompt the RDA to amend their vote, which would allow for the infusion of $6 million to purchase the land in Freetown.”
That 325-acre undeveloped property is owned by controversial Rhode Island land developer Churchill & Banks, headed by Richard Baccari.
The RDA voted 3-2 on July 22 to sell the 300 acres of the former biopark to the Mashpees for $21 million pending legalization of gambling in Massachusetts this year and other conditions.
In order for FROED to purchase the acreage in the Freetown park, Flanagan said, “We would seek $6 million from a separate entity, more than likely the Mashpee Wampanoags. The $6 million is very critical to complete this transaction,” he said.
“Lurking in the background is what’s UMass going to do?” said Kenney, who has been contacted by concerned city councilors after voting against the RDA sale in July.
“If they say, ‘We’d like to go to New Bedford,’ what does the mayor do then?
He says they’re both going to happen,” Kenney said of Flanagan’s continued pronouncement the Mashpees will build a casino in Fall River and the university will build in Freetown through a multiparty transaction.
Flanagan and FROED’s director, Kenneth Fiola Jr., said the city would not lose significant tax revenue by shifting the biopark to Freetown because the university does not pay taxes and the level of companies agreeing to locate to such a park would require longterm tax breaks.
Also, Fall River would supply the water and sewer to the riverfront park, they said.
While the City Council has requested that Kenney, Fiola and the Flanagan administration update the status of the casino and land sale to the tribe at its next meeting Sept. 14, councilors recently considered issuing a resolution to change courses.
“It may be time to reshuffle again,” said council Vice President Linda Pereira. She called on Flanagan, whom she’s often at odds with, “to put all the cards on the table.”
The resolution proposed by Councilor Eric Poulin was signed onto by four councilors but never filed. It “encouraged the Fall River Redevelopment
Authority to convene a meeting as soon as possible and that they consider voting to offer the 300 acres (off Route 24) back to UMass before the university reaches its final decision.”
“My fear is to lose both,” Poulin said. Councilors Brad Kilby, Leo Pelletier and Pereira agreed, but Poulin fell short obtaining the unanimous council support he sought.
Poulin said when Flanagan in May announced the tentative casino agreement with the tribe, it was with the prospect the state would legalize gambling by the end of July.
That put the prior plan of developing a prestigious and state-backed biopark on the back burner.
The objective, Poulin said, was to find needed short-term casino jobs with city unemployment in the mid-teens, and the longer-term jobs coming from biotechnology. “Now we could be chasing after a casino for three years or more,” Poulin said.
He said Flanagan has not identified how casino construction could start quickly. “I have some questions and concerns about developing the site with sovereign nation status.”
That’s what prompted Kenney to vote against the RDA sale. It’s yet to be signed because the state has not legalized casino gaming.
Flanagan, through talks with tribal leaders and the Department of Interior, said final documents to designate the RDA-owned park as sovereign land could take “a few months.”
But according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs web site, there are more than 1,900 land trust applications, of which “over 95 percent are for non-gaming purposes.”
Salazar said this summer he’s prioritized restoring tribal lands for non-gaming applications, such as to provide housing, health care and education to improve tribal members’ self-sufficiency.
“He’s put a lot of eggs into this basket,” Poulin said of Flanagan’s secondary option for the tribe to build a casino.
“That’s a heck of risk the mayor took,” Pereira said. “I don’t buy that the pay-off is what he says it’s going to be.”
From materials Flanagan circulates from the Mashpees, he estimates the phased project would include: 1,000 to 1,200 construction jobs building the casino and first hotel and 3,500 to 5,000 permanent jobs; they’d pay $30,000 to $45,000 with tips; and would spur 5,000 to 6,000 “indirect jobs,” he said.
With funding by the Malaysian group that financed Foxwoods, the project would include two more hotels, a golf course, spa and retail/entertainment complex, the tribe stated.
Poulin said timing was a prime reason he did not file the council resolution. He said he tried unsuccessfully to have a special meeting before their regular session on Sept. 14. “At that point UMass would probably have made a decision,” he said.
Councilor Michael Lund, however, is among council members that believe the Flanagan administration should be given more time to bring a casino.
“I think Flanagan is looking at the casino as a way to bridge the gap for jobs for people in the 30-50-year-old age group who could be retrained. And I think there’s merit to that,” Lund said.
He said by the Legislature apparently not passing gaming this year, “We’re not under the gun. Let’s take our time and get this right … I think Flanagan is trying to do the right thing, and I think we have a unique opportunity.”
Lund said he also believes the city needs to be careful if the RDA property goes into sovereign land trust with the tribe. “What happens if the casino doesn’t come and the Indians own it and there’s no reverter clause (back to city ownership)?” he asked.
Flanagan said the tribe’s financial backers would invest to build a casino. Also, having the park in land trust would not lift the prohibition against using it for a landfill, Flanagan said. “It would never happen,” he said, stating the city and state would sue the tribe for such a use that would be tied up for years.
“If I believed this project had no life in it, I would never pursue it,” Flanagan said. He’s convinced Massachusetts soon will legalize gambling. “There’s been too much of an investment for this not to occur.”
E-mail Michael Holtzman at mholtzman@heraldnews.com.
Yes, it IS the silly season in Fall River, which means not only are representatives in our Great and General Court facing primaries and final elections in the upcoming next few months, but Mayor Sylvanagan has started reelection drum beating quite early after his monumentally poor performance, and all of it enough to drown ANY mayor, even though he is but 8 months through his first term. What an utter disaster this Prince of Putz has been! I fear it's the only taste of royalty Bag Boy Deluxe will ever know.
"This is Bag Boy Deluxe's beach...Do you want to wait here like this until the election next year?!"
" NO SIR!"
"So let's SURF, GOD DAMMIT!"
Then , after the refusal of the Interior Department to declare the sacred "300 acres" sovereign Indian land, and finding out Bag Boys' crack legal team is, well , basically "crack-ish" in it's legal opinions and the City has no right to purchase land in another town from Bacarri the (alleged) Indicted One, a heavy campaign contributor to BB Deluxe and other elected officials in Fall River, an eerie silence comes over the beach.
Then Lt. Col.Kilgore says: "Smell that son......that's the smell of weak and incompetent politicans scrambling for cover like the sociopaths they are....I love it....it's the smell of....VICTORY....."
And that's exactly what this letter from Mayor Sylvanagan to the Interior Department is...PANIC. Pure and unadulterated panic. His political fortunes, and the livelihoods of his pilot fish followers, will rest entirely on the ability of he and his too live crew of morons, psychopaths and mental defectives working for him in his legal offices, at FROED and in his campaign to get that casino open, or at least have everything sign , sealed and delivered, well before the next election. I just don't see it happening.
Hubris. In the dictionary next to the word hubris should be a picture of Mayor Sylvanagan. It has destroyed the political careers of men and women who were far better leaders, statement, administrators and politicians than Bag Boy Deluxe. And he is still blind to these realities, both that it is what he suffers from the most, and that it will lead to his utter failure. The only trouble is, it will lead to all of our downfalls as well. To this he is also either blind, or in true politician sociopathy, doesn't care!
He must know what one of the commenters to this story on the pages of the Herald News wrote:
Skoorey:
So we give the land to the Mashpees as trust land, no taxes paid, no laws of the Commonwealth or the USA have to be followed, and then we supply the water and sewer to UMass. Wow! A huge biotech deal gets whittled down to water and poop. Perfect. Thanks Mayor! Just what Fall River always wanted! Crap squared.
AND LATER:
FACTS THE MAYOR HAS IGNORED:
1. Land into Trust applications cannot be amended, they must be resubmitted
2. Mashpees say different things, that they have a) amended their application, and b) submitted a new application that is for Fall River land (so which is it???)
3. The Mashpees have not submitted a new application. Source: Federal Register
4. The Mashpees DO NOT OWN THE LAND YET as the contract has not been signed, pending legislature passing gaming bill and signed by governor
5. It takes a minimum of 5-7 YEARS for an application to process
6. Mashpees have NO ancestral ties to Fall River, thus their future application will be denied
This is what happens when you are advised by a corporate council who does not have IGRA experience. Due diligence Mr. Fiola? Due diligence Mr. Torres? Due diligence Mr. Flanagan?
I think not.
SHIP OF FOOLS!
He simply cannot be that stupid or blind, even though he IS an attorney! No, this letter is as much about the next election as it is actually trying to bring jobs, any kind of jobs, home to Fall River.
With everything that he's been caught up in lately, unseemly things and exercises in power politics that appear to benefit ONLY members of the FROED Board of Directors and campaign contributors personally, any seasoned watcher of politics in the United States can read how desperate this man is right now. And that's not a good place for Fall River to be. Not good or safe at all.
Why won't Joe Justice call a special meeting to focus squarely on this issue? He will call one for a body shop but this isn't important enough for one? Give me a break. The Council will get around to talking about this on Sept. 14th? After UMass has likely already made a decision? What sense does that make? I smell stupidity at work here.
ReplyDeleteYes...and it's a foul odor indeed, isn't it? But that's what Fall Riverites have become far too comfortable with from their elected officials. People like Councilman Poulin stick out like a sore thumb because they are young and bright and do not have a tie to any particular power faction. So whenever he recommends something that, to the NORMAL person in Fall River, the rest want to bum rush him! They are so threatened by making decisions and telling other politicians and leeching business men "NO!" when they approach them with an open hand and a crooked check book. It's sickening, but that's part and parcle of Fall River's political culture. I honestly do not believe it will never change.
ReplyDeleteAt this point, the best thing that could happen for the average taxpayer in Fall River would be for the Republican candidate for Governor, Baker, to be elected. He would clean out the rancid rats nest of corruption and patronage which is FROED and the rest of the political power establishment. He was Secretary of Administration and Finance the last time a City went into full receivership, Chelsea, and changed the form of government to a "weak mayor - strong city manager" ....that's the only way Fall River's decades old retractable problems of stressed tax base, poor schools and high crime and unemployment will be solved. Fewer politicians and more decision making!
This sentence above:
ReplyDelete"So whenever he recommends something that, to the NORMAL person in Fall River, the rest want to bum rush him!",
Should have read:
So whenever he recommends something that, to the NORMAL person in Fall River seems resonable, the rest want to bum rush him!
Sorry and thank you!
Chow Mein,
ReplyDeleteAttempts to avoid local politics are challenging in this instance and my attempts to refute the delusions of local poor reporting are here: Fall River Herald News: Shirks Responsibility!
As of more than a year ago, there is NO Land into Trust Process! None! Nada! Zilch! Courtesy of 2 SCOTUS decisions. (To the uninitiated, that's Supreme Court of the United States - the final word.)
Theodore Olson argued Carcieri v Salazar before SCOTUS and the Massachusetts Attorney General assisted in writing the amicus brief supporting Carcieri.
And then there's that pesky (unanimous) "Hawaii" decision that says, simply: the federal government can't take land away from states after they've joined the union - a Constitutional matter.
I attempted to post the facts, the decisions, the law and make a reasonable and simple explanation about why this is Donkey Dust.
You mentioned Willie went to law school and piqued my curiosity. Maybe they no longer teach about the Constitution in law school. Was it the same school Perry attended?
Is anyone asking where there is a cost/benefit analysis of this Fiasco?
There are all kinds of reports and studies and information posted here: United to Stop Slots in Massachusetts
One reports estimates that it will cost a community about $50 million per year to host a SLOT BARN.
The more you learn about SLOT BARNS, the more you know this destroys a community.
A federal report determined that Gambling Addiction doubled within a 50 mile radius.
Along with that, crime increases.
What happens in Fall River will NOT stay in Fall River and you are my neighbors.
MR, I was emailed about your article and I must say, it is fantastic!. The Great Mendacious One, Mayor Sylvanagan, is trying to hoodwink and bamboozle the citzens of Fall River at every step. It is shameful, and I must ad, much worse than his much loathed predecessor ever thought of doing, not just to fall River, but to the entire South Coast region.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your dogged attention to this issue!