Berlin To Discuss Casino Revenue Spending Plan

BERLIN– Elected officials are expected to begin discussing ways to spend the town’s casino revenue next week.

On Monday, the town will host a work session to discuss development of a multi-year plan for the use of casino revenues. While discussion will take place, Mayor Zack Tyndall said this week the actual spending plan would need to be developed during the budget process, once the town had projections for revenues and expenditures for the coming year.

“The goal would be before the end of this fiscal year to have a multi-year plan,” Mayor Zack Tyndall said.

On Feb. 13, town officials agreed to enroll in the Law Enforcement Officers Pension System (LEOPS). They did not, however, determine what portion of the town’s annual local impact grant—casino revenues—would be used to cover the more than $300,000 annual expense. At the Feb. 13 meeting, Councilman Jay Knerr said he wanted the town to enroll in LEOPS but didn’t want to use casino revenue to fund the program forever. He suggested decreasing the amount of casino revenue used for the annual expense gradually over three years. He said LEOPS should be a general fund expense like payroll. Then casino revenue—which up until now was used to pay off the cost of the town’s new police station—could be used for a variety of projects throughout town. Projections show the town receiving more than $418,000 in casino revenue in fiscal year 2024, $458,284 in fiscal year 2025 and $502,279 in fiscal year 2026.

Potential uses for the funding that were brought up at that meeting included LEOPS, a community center, capital improvements, infrastructure upgrades, capital reserve funding for fire and EMS, automated external defibrillators, radios and GIS.

“As far as what makes the final cut, we will be working through that,” Tyndall said. “I think the biggest takeaway is we need to look at it in conjunction with the fiscal year 2024 budget.”

A general fund budget work session is set for April 3, followed by a work session for the enterprise funds later that month. Tyndall is hopeful the council will finalize a multi-year casino revenue spending plan in May.

“Once we have the multi-year plan constructed we’d send that to the Local Development Council for review,” he said.

The Local Development Council, an advisory body, reviews the use of local impact grants by the municipalities that receive casino revenue each year.

About The Author: Charlene Sharpe

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Charlene Sharpe has been with The Dispatch since 2014. A graduate of Stephen Decatur High School and the University of Richmond, she spent seven years with the Delmarva Media Group before joining the team at The Dispatch.