Where We Stand On The Casino/Race Track Proposal

An Update Ahead of the August 2nd Plymouth Select Board Meeting

[Readers – First of all, apologies for the relatively long absence. The last two weeks have been quite busy, both with visiting kith and kin, the brutal heat, and also an unrelenting pace of public events on a number of fronts.

I did have a reader request for an update on the Casino/Horse Track proposal for the County Woodlot. What follows is my understanding of the situation as it currently stands, and is free to all as a matter of essential public interest:]

Wright and Valanzola Vote For Lease with Boston South; Hanley Absent

The Plymouth County Commissioners voted on Thursday, July 21st, to lease the County Woodlot to Boston South Real Estate Group, a cutout corporation for the O’Connell dynasty of Quincy development interests.

The vote was 2-0, with Sandra Wright (R-Bridgewater) and Jared Valanzola (R-Rockland) voting in favor of the lease. Mrs. Wright presided over the meeting as the Chair of the Commission.

Providentially, Commissioner Greg Hanley (D-Plymouth) was not there to take a vote one way or another on selling out the town in which he dwells to avaricious outside corporate development interests.

( Plymouth County Commission Chair Sandra Wright (R-Bridgewater), left, and Commissioner Jared Valanzola (R-Rockland), center, during the County Commission Meeting on July 21st; Plymouth County Executive Assistant Nancy O’Rourke gestures towards Valanzola’s paper, while County Treasurer Thomas O’Brien (D-Kingston) is seated at right. Photo credit — J. Benjamin Cronin. )

Speaking of providential coincidences, Carlos Da Silva, a Hingham Democrat seeking his party’s nomination to take on Mrs. Wright in the November Election, and who has emerged as a prominent critic of the Boston South horse track/casino scheme, had a fundraiser in Plymouth scheduled at the same time as the County was meeting to confirm the lease.

Given that one of the members did not even show up for such an important meeting, and that a full vote of the Commission could not be taken, it struck some observers as suspicious that the vote in favor of signing the lease simply had to be timed for an hour when many of its foremost opponents would be otherwise occupied.

In fact, I was one of three members of the public at the July 21st, meeting — myself, Attorney and Plymouth Town Meeting Member Richard Serkey, and WATD reporter Bobbi Clark, were the sum total of people present at the meeting who weren’t employed by the County.

Indeed, Mrs. Wright got something of a surprise when she introduced herself to me, after the meeting, thinking with my notebook I worked for a local establishment news outlet; I did not, but did let her know I firmly opposed her plans — or really, the plans of people who seem to be operating at levels of power far higher than her own: if the County exists merely as a cat’s paw for ruthless and insultingly arrogant development interests, what reason is there to do anything but abolish it, as most counties in Massachusetts already have already been?

It is evident that Boston South Group and their local comprador¹ Loring Tripp III, intend to continue with their self-interested and destructive design; we know this because they say as much, through Tripp, in their June 7th letter to acting Town Manager Derek Brindisi. Tripp is clear that, despite being defeated at the May Elections by a margin of 88% to 12%, they continue to “explore our main concept under the proposal, as well as many other options.”

Legal Impediments to Boston South

However, there are a number of legal impediments to Tripp, the O’Connells, and Boston South in realizing their scheme.

The most serious are statutory.

Chapter 128A of the Massachusetts General Laws governs horse racing in the Commonwealth. It is a long and complicated law, and I am no expert in it, nor am I an attorney.

However, knowledgeable attorneys with interest in this matter, such as Stephen J. Bolotin, Esq., the newest member of the Plymouth Planning Board, and Lynn Holdsworth, Esq., a longtime member of the Plymouth community, have studied the matter. There are several relevant sections of the statute to which they point.

Section 13A of M.G.L. Ch. 128A explicitly gives control over the location of any horse (or dog) racing track to the Select Board of the Town of Plymouth: 

   “…no license shall be granted by the commission for a racing meeting in any city or town, except in connection with a state or county fair, unless the location of the race track where such meeting is to be held or conducted has been once approved by the mayor and city council or the town council or the selectmen as provided by said section thirty-three of said chapter two hundred and seventy-one, after a public hearing, seven days' notice of the time and place of which hearing shall have been given by posting in a conspicuous public place in such city or town and by publication in a newspaper published in such city or town, if there is any published therein, otherwise in a newspaper published in the county wherein such city or town is situated.”

        The Plymouth Select Board expressly denied its approval of a race track on the County Woodlot in its June 8th, 2022; it therefore cannot go forward at this time under the statute.

      Section 3 of M.G.L. Ch. 128A, Clause (l), likewise throws a spanner in the works for Boston South et al. – it prohibits the a license of the County Woodlot precisely because the County owns it; Boston South, recall, is leasing it for three years at present:

     “No license shall be issued to permit horse or dog racing meetings to be held on premises owned by the commonwealth or any political subdivision thereof.”

Section 14 of M.G.L. Ch. 128A, as I interpret it, calls for a vote by the registered voters of Plymouth County, not just a vote of the County Commission, before any racing license is issued (perhaps such a vote has been taken in the past across all 27 Towns and Cities in Plymouth County; but I know of no such vote in general, and can state with certainty that none exists on the specific question of the horse track at the County Woodlot):

      “Licenses shall not be granted under this chapter for the holding or conducting of any horse racing meeting or any dog racing meeting within any county unless a majority of the registered voters of such county voting on the following described questions relative to granting such licenses when said questions were last submitted to them have voted in the affirmative.”

      Indeed, the statute provides specific language that must appear on the ballot via the Secretary of State’s Office.

      As referenced above, a different statute, Ch. 271 of the General Laws, Section 33, states that 

“No land within a town shall be laid out or used as a race ground or trotting park without the previous consent of and location by the mayor and city council, the town council in a town having a town council or the selectmen in any other town, who may regulate and alter the terms and conditions under which the same shall be laid out, used or continued in use and may discontinue the same when in their judgment the public good so requires….”

Despite all this, there is serious concern that the O’Connells will attempt to sway the Legislature to alter Ch. 128A so that they can build their horse track/casino. This is one reason the Select Board has expressed interest in hearing from Plymouth’s delegation on Beacon Hill about what can be done to ensure Boston South does not change the law to suit its own private — and remunerative — purposes.

With the legalization of betting on sporting events with the close of the recent legislative session, there are concerns being expressed that this will buoy Boston South, despite the formidable legal obstacles that remain in their way.

Select Board Opts Not to Consult Town Counsel; Sand Concerns

     These are complicated legal matters, and it would stand to reason that the Plymouth Select Board would do well to consult with Town Counsel on these matters of supreme public import.

      Yet precisely the opposite occurred at the July 26th Select Board Meeting. Despite a valiant effort by Selectman Harry Helm, the Board voted not to consult Town Counsel at this juncture, by a 3 to 2 vote; Helm and Select Board Chair Betty Cavacco voted in the affirmative; Selectmen Charles Bletzer, Richard Quintal, Jr., and John Mahoney voted in the negative.

       Meanwhile, some observers fear that Boston South/the O’Connells will use the putative due diligence period to clear cut the Woodlot, and mine the sand, given that sand is at an all time high value, according to statistics kept by the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis. It would not be the first time an area developer has done something similar.

      A quick glance at local sand prices indicate that a ton of sand typically sells for between about $15/ton and $40/ton, depending upon the quality, purpose, etc. If we assume a 50% markup from wholesale to retail, let’s call that between $7.50 and $20 per ton. Let’s use a figure between the two that is easy to calculate with – say, $10 per ton.

Meanwhile, the Woodlot is over 100 acres, so let’s figure out what an acre of sand to a depth of 10 feet would be worth. Using a sand calculator that the construction industry uses for planning (https://www.omnicalculator.com/construction/sand) and purchases, I calculated that an acre (242 by 20 yards) of sand is worth approximately $217,800; multiply that figure by 100, and we get a figure of approximately $21.78 million. So even without building a casino or a race track, the O’Connells may think that carting away our commons by the truckload, in an area that ought to be used to protect the Plymouth-Carver Sole Source aquifer, is still worth their while.

These are conservative estimates, and are almost certainly an underestimate. Nevertheless, the value of the sand is a significant factor that the People and their representatives must be made aware of.

The Plymouth Select Board is scheduled to discuss Boston South at its meeting tomorrow, August 2nd, starting at 6 pm, in the Great Hall at Plymouth Town Hall, and also via Zoom.

1. In the Portuguese Empire in the Indian Ocean, in South, Southeast, and East Asia, a comprador was a member of the local society that sold out his countrymen to the Portuguese in order to benefit himself and his associates.