The mayor said the city’s casino windfall should be spent improving education, public safety, and public infrastructure.Ĭouncilor Pat Casey, a lifelong city resident who has lived the past 71 years in the Fall River home where she was born, said she supports the project because “we need to give people the opportunity to work.”Ĭlyde Barrow, a casino specialist and a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, said Fall River voters have consistently supported casinos in nonbinding votes and in public opinion surveys. Fall River can also expect the casino to pay millions in taxes, the specific amount to be negotiated in a host agreement between Flanagan and casino executives.

In each case, the casino developers began their successful public campaigns with enthusiastic support from a mayor eager to attract jobs and revenue.įlanagan strongly endorsed the Foxwoods plans Tuesday, saying the project would create 3,000 to 5,000 permanent jobs. Voters in just three Massachusetts communities, all urban, approved resort-style casinos in 2013: Revere, Everett, and Springfield. Fall River’s jobless rate was more than 12 percent in December, according to unadjusted state labor figures, far above the statewide average of 7 percent.

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