A casino in our town?

When Bruce and I visited Cedar Rapids back in 1989 for his interview at Coe, I was amused by the way people described the city to us.  "It's a great place to raise a family," was the constant refrain--usually directed at me.  We weren't yet married, and I was planning on going to graduate school, so I found the constant focus on family life a bit odd.

Once we moved here, I began to discover the character of this town.  OK, yes, it is a nice place to raise a family.  The schools are good, housing is reasonably priced, there is plenty for young families to do.  But as a  person without young kids, I noticed other things.

Like the fact that Cedar Rapids has its own symphony orchestra that plays in a beautiful venue.  It has a great public library.  There are lovely, walkable neighborhoods. There is a minor-league baseball team that plays from April through August, and farmer's markets somewhere in the area every day during the summer.

Cedar Rapids is a city that provides opportunities for residents to enjoy cultural and recreational activities in the company of their neighbors.

And that flood of 2008?  It showed the city's character growing and changing as city residents turned out to help each other in times of disaster.  That growth and change in our city's character seems permanent--it's evident in the new Matthew 25 ministries in the Time Check neighborhood that flourishes even after the flood.

I am wondering, these days, how the character of my new hometown will change in the upcoming year or so.  This Tuesday, we are voting on whether we want to have a casino in our downtown.

I think it is awesome that we get to vote on this matter--it's so democratic!  The casino will be a private business, but our state has decided that the people in the city get to decide whether we want it or not.

That's because a casino is not the usual kind of business. It's a business that can be considered illegal if not done correctly. It doesn't make things.  It doesn't provide services.  Casino owners would say it provides entertainment, but I'm not sure.  Is a casino entertaining all the time, or just when you win?

A casino makes money because people mostly lose their money. And it makes a lot of money on people who can least afford to be "entertained" in that way.  Even the "gaming" industry's affiliated charity, the National Center for Responsible Gaming, says that 5-15% of gambling profits come from problem gamblers; other organizations put the figure at 30-50%.  I imagine it's somewhere in between.

Everyone agrees that people with lower incomes spend a larger percent of their money in casinos than wealthier people do.

I've never been to a casino. But occasionally, the local news shows video clips from inside our Midwest casinos--now located throughout Iowa.

Casinos in movies are filled with young, wealthy-looking extras wearing tuxes and slinky gowns.

The real casinos here in the Midwest are filled with ordinary people (mostly older folks), smoking and yanking on one-armed bandits.  They look rather unhappy, even when showers of coins pour out of the machines.

The coins go back into the machines.  I guess that's what we want to happen.  That's what creates jobs in this kind of business:  persuading people they're going to win, when they're really going to lose.  Yes, Cedar Rapids will gain some tax revenues.  Yes, there will be some money given to some local organizations.  But is this the way we want to get it?

The way I see it, Cedar Rapids has a chance on March 5, to determine the direction that its character will grow.  Do the residents of Cedar Rapids want to live in the kind of city that wants a casino?   I don't.