Bellicose Bumpkin

Tribe optioned adjacent land before the auction
The Cape Cod Times has an interesting article related to the land auction by the town of Middleboro that resulted in the Mashpee Wampanoag acquiring land for a casino.

The paper reports:

The first thing that jumps into my mind is that this option, signed two days before the land auction would have taken a significant amount of time to prepare. The second thing that sticks out is that this option specifically mentions the upcoming land auction. So, the first public notice of the land sale was at the selectman’s meeting on April 9th. It was first posted in the paper on April 12th. Somehow, a mere 13 days later, the investors signed an option on the Strial land. Are they that efficient or did they have foreknowledge of the auction?

My wildest dreams…
My mind drifts back to May not long after the auction. The recently formed CasinoFacts.org stormed Middleboro Town Hall to attend a meeting that was supposed to be an informational meeting with guest speaker Jon Whitten about the nuts and bolts of Indian casinos. At this meeting, we were basically told that it was a done deal and our best bet was to cut the best deal we could.

I also remember – and someone please correct me if I’m wrong – that Selectman Perkins told the crowd that the town had met with the Tribe and discussed various parcels of land, including the piece that was auctioned off. He then told us, and I’m paraphrasing from memory that “never in my wildest dreams, when we decided to auction off that land, did I think that the Tribe would bid on it”. This elicited groans from the crowd and many suffered eye strain from excessive eye-rolling.

The process was “legal”
The article includes reaction from some Middleboro town officials:

The question here is not whether or not the land auction was legal. It was. The question is whether or not it was smart. It wasn’t. We essentially gave away our most valuable bargaining chip – the land – and left ourselves at a severe disadvantage in the negotiations. And what’s worse, it doesn’t seem to be a matter of bad luck, or being out-maneuvered by the tribe. We knowingly auctioned off a large well-located piece of land when we knew the Tribe was shopping around for casino property. Many people believe that we did this in collusion with the tribe. Others think it was simply inept leadership. Neither prospect is very appealing.

Auction revenue is beside the point
Another point the article makes is that some towns use professional auctioneers to get top dollar for the land. Middleboro runs the auction themselves. It gives an example of Sandwich getting “$26,470 an acre, or $12,000″ more than Middleboro got for the land. Given the life of a casino, this shortfall is small potatoes. The much bigger issue is that the casino payments to Middleboro are half, maybe less than half, of what they should have been.

People who are fans of consistency can draw comfort from the fact that the auction was a bad deal for Middleboro, the process was a bad deal for Middleboro, the agreement is a bad deal for Middleboro, and the effects of the casino will be a bad deal from Middleboro.

There I go again – always looking for a silver lining.