Casino Developer Seeks Horse Track at Old Exit 5

Plymouth Select Board Votes to Proceed; County Commission Refuses to Hear Public Comment, Votes Lease

April 6th, 2022

PLYMOUTH – The casino developers who were defeated last year in Wareham, by a margin of 85-15% at Wareham Town Meeting, are back for another bite at the apple, proposing to put a massive horse track and casino on the Plymouth County-owned woodlot at Old Exit 5, in the woods behind BJ's Wholesale, in Plymouth.

The Plymouth County Commission approved the initial lease for three years at a meeting on Thursday, March 31st, 2022.

The seemingly surreptitious manner in which the votes, not only of the County Commission, but of the Plymouth Select Board as well, were cast, raised serious questions among local citizens. The Select Board, after letting opponents file out, very quickly and very quietly called a vote at their March 29th meeting, ultimately approving the initial process of allowing the development by a 3-2 vote; Richard Quintal, Betty Cavacco, and Charlie Bletzer voted in favor; Patrick Flaherty and Harry Helm voted to oppose. One of the Selectmen voting for the project reportedly admitted not reading the proposal before him.

Opponents cite concerns with traffic (new apartments already are under construction off Long Pond Road at Old Exit 5); the social and public health problems that will come with a casino, in a region already ravaged by addiction; the fact that both casinos and horse racing are currently losing money in Massachusetts; the allegations of animal cruelty in horse racing; the destruction of globally rare Atlantic coastal pine barrens; the threat posed to the aquifer, including all 450 or so of Plymouth’s beautiful ponds, and more.

In addition, they note that experience almost invariably shows that development does not, in fact, lower taxes, but rather raises them, as increased strain on municipal services drive higher costs for Towns. This is in turn used to justify calls for further development, enriching private development interests while auctioning off our common resources. It is the logic of a Ponzi scheme.

On March 29th, the County Commissioners -- who have very few responsibilities except overseeing this once-upon-a-time woodlot; it is, frankly speaking, a sinecure for quasi-retired politicians, whom, as we shall see, were curiously uninterested in representing their constituents — voted to begin participating in such a scheme.

Executive Session at Packed Meeting

I arrived at the meeting of the Commission immediately after it had opened, but the Commissioners had already gone into Executive Session, so that they could discuss the lease of the County Woodlot without having the eyes of the public upon them (transparency clearly was not the goal).

  Meanwhile, the long wooden benches in the meeting room were packed. This, we should note, is a meeting that usually nobody, and I mean nobody, attends, mainly because County Government in much of New England is the civic equivalent of a vestigial tail – or perhaps an appendix, a useless sack, full of poison, may be more apposite an analogy. The County Sheriff runs the jails and courts, the Registrar of Deeds the deeds, and the Commissioners themselves are so extraneous that there have been numerous proposals to abolish Plymouth County as a government body (which prospect I pointedly raised to Commissioner Hanley tonight, as did Sharl Heller, President of the Southeastern Massachusetts Pine Barrens Alliance). The following county governments have been abolished in Massachusetts: Berkshire, Essex, Franklin, Hampden, Hampshire, Middlesex, First Norfolk(ed. -- meaning unclear), Suffolk, and Worcester.

Charles Vautrain, whom I knew in the 1990s and early 2000s as the librarian at Duxbury High School, was there. Mr. Vautrain serves as a Town Meeting Member in Plymouth’s representative Town Meeting. Kathy Dunn, the guidance counselor from Duxbury High and a member of the Plymouth League of Women Voters, was also present. My friend Frank Mand, formerly of The Old Colony Memorial and now Plymouth Planning Board, sits a few benches in front of me. Working families, alongside concerned neighbors, outraged citizens, environmentalists, attorneys and scholars and teachers, and many mothers and grandmothers, who are perhaps the best at shaming unrepentant sinners and politicians, filled the hall.

Motion Approved, Public Comment Forbidden

There are three commissioners that carry out the attenuated functions of Plymouth County government: Greg Hanley (D-Plymouth), Susan Wright (R-Bridgewater), and Jared Valanzola (R-Rockland). When they reappeared, they almost immediately voted to open the process of a lease with the same casino development interests that unsuccessfully came at Wareham last Spring. It was Notos last year; it’s Boston South Development this time around; both are connected to the O’Connell family of developers in Quincy. The Commissioners, remarkably, and tellingly, refused to take public comment on this major vote, saying it would come at a later public meeting.

Attorney and Plymouth Town Meeting Member Richard Serkey sought to address the meeting, standing in that patient way those called to the bar do, finally having to speak out as they moved without discussion, advising that the proposed development was not even legal under current zoning laws in force in Plymouth.

Ms. Wright, the Chair, refused to permit the testimony of Attorney Serkey, or any members of the public. 

    At this point, a shout arose from the back benches -- "Shame!"

Others took up the cry, and soon the room chanted it in chorus. Phones went up, recording the members of the County Commission as they noted their generosity, through a charity drive in association with the Ukrainian Catholic Church, to the Ukraine, having just begun the process of selling our birthright for a mess of pottage – to put it in appropriately Biblical terms.

Hanley Agrees to Meet

The meeting broke up. Ken Tavares, the former head of the Plymouth Select Board and a major opponent of the idea, approached Hanley. Meanwhile, I spoke with Mr. Serkey. He had represented my old landlady, the late Inghilt Traenkle, whom I had lived next door to and from whom I rented a cottage above Powder Horn Pond in the Plymouth Woods. He explained that the idea is a non-starter; the land cannot be developed as zoned. An analogy that he later used was that for the lease the County negotiated to have any use for the casino interests, the sun would have to rise in the West.

At this time, former Select Board Chair Tavares spoke up -- Mr. Hanley, he said, would agree to meet the aggrieved commoners, while the two GOP Commissioners fled. We trooped to a kind of open conference room in the basement.

County Enters Into Agreement – Despite Knowing It Can't Be Carried Out?

When Attorney Serkey advised Commissioner Hanley (after the latter's long, self-justifying and repetitive speech – which I told him was filibustering so he didn't have to answer us) that the contract they were proposing to enter into could not be executed, since the chances of the land being rezoned via a 2/3 Vote of Town Meeting were nearly zero.

Attorney Serkey continued his line of inquiry. Did he realize the land could never be used as a casino?

Yes, Hanley said. But we were getting $450,000 in lease money (over three years) for it, so all was well, was his response, more or less. Besides, he didn't want this himself -- he would commit to us on that. But meanwhile we could get this money from the developers and use it. He grinned broadly, but his constituents were not amused.

     Indeed, Serkey, and the audience, were taken aback. Because Hanley just admitted to us all, including Plymouth Town Meeting Members (i.e., the legislative branch of Town Government in Plymouth), with reporters present for the Patriot Ledger and Old Colony Memorial, that the County Commission essentially sold a lemon to the developers, a property they know cannot be developed as presently zoned, and that zoning requires a Two Thirds vote of Town Meeting, which is extremely unlikely.

Mothers and Grandmothers Can (Rightly) Make People Squirm

Hanley deserves some credit -- he met with us. Serkey, Tavares, myself, Plymouth Town Meeting reps, all spoke about it. Hanley listened. But the League of Women Voters and the mothers and grandmothers really let him have it.

"Are you proud of this? Do you think this is ethical," he was asked.

"Ethical?" He looked quizzically at the woman asking the question, as though it had not occurred to him. "I guess I could ask my ethics people.... but I think we got 450,000 in hand now --"

Town Meeting Member Vautrain interjected: "You don't have it in hand, you have it in three sums over three years, 250,000, 100,000, and 150,000!"

It went on like this for some time. It was illuminating, in an ironic, Candide kind of way. The reality is that we can defeat it, it is just a large tax on our time and resources to prevent something that our elected officials should be tackling for us, and are not.

Yet, for all the cynicism that the by turns absurd and contemptible conduct of our elected officials might engender, that is not what came through strongly at last Thursday’s meeting. Rather, a great democratic (with a small “d”) awakening seemed to be in the making, as people, some of them for the first time, began to engage in the difficult task of self-government – a task made all the more difficult when your own elected officials are acting against your own interests. But no one there was willing to just be rolled over. People were taking email addresses, crafting arguments, and preparing to join the great battle for our communities and our commons that lies ahead.

           And that is no small thing. In fact, it could be the beginning of something bigger than we realize.

Plymouth will hold Town Elections on May 21st, 2022.