The Cape Girardeau City Council decided to hit the pause button on projects that will be funded by the first eight months of revenue generated by the casino.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, Mayor Harry Rediger thought the council had already massaged the projects enough to allow city staff to begin work. But council members wanted to wait on better income projections from the casino.
City Council built a plan to place casino revenue in four different categories, like a legacy endowment, innovation, capital improvements, and another category that funds regional economic development and downtown capital improvements.
Councilman John Voss thinks that approach should apply to funds generated during the casino’s first eight months of operation.
“The Council worked very hard to develop a funding formula on how we would like to use the revenue from the casino being in town,” Voss said. “I would advocate for that formula being applied to every month’s worth of revenue that comes into the community, not just in a full fiscal year.”
The Council will look at the projects again on March 18, according to Mayor Rediger.
“We wanted to look at another month of receipts and another month perusing the total projects and drilling down on the estimated costs of those projects,” Rediger said.
Councilman Mark Lanzotti also wants to see better projections on casino income before proceeding.
The council already pinpointed several early projects it would like to tackle, including new warning sirens, playground and exercise equipment at Shawnee Park, new Main Street lighting, space design for the police department and demolition of the old CVB building.
Only one specific project was singled out for further review, a Broadway parking lot behind Last Call.
