Deal blocks casino threat, for now

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors last week signed a new deal with the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, that extends the tribe’s moratorium on building a casino near Petaluma until at least 2025.|

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors last week signed a new deal with the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, that extends the tribe’s moratorium on building a casino near Petaluma until at least 2025.

One of two casino-owning tribes in the county, the Dry Creek tribe owns a large and currently vacant parcel of land just south of Petaluma, where the threat of a casino has loomed for a decade.

The deal also prohibits the tribe for 10 years from taking its 277-acre land into federal trust, a step that would allow the tribe to bypass county zoning regulations and build virtually anything at the city’s southern gateway.

For Petaluma, where voters overwhelmingly passed an advisory measure in 2006 stating opposition to a casino and the crime and traffic it would bring, the deal is a good one. While it doesn’t preclude the tribe from ever opening a Petaluma casino in the future, it certainly forestalls the possibility for at least 12 or 13 years.

The renegotiated deal is the result of slumping revenue at the Dry Creek tribe’s River Rock Casino in Geyserville due to the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria, a rival tribe, opening its $800 million gambling palace in Rohnert Park. When the Graton Casino opened in 2013, River Rock took a huge hit.

The Dry Creek tribe missed payments to its creditors and guaranteed payments it was required to make to Sonoma County to offset the impacts of the casino. In exchange for forgiving some of the tribe’s missed payments and reducing its annual payment going forward from $3.5 million to $750,000, the county received the concessions on the Petaluma property.

With the Graton tribe having the dominant casino in the county, continuing to siphon revenue from River Rock, for the foreseeable future, the Dry Creek tribe will certainly be looking for other revenue-generating enterprises. Since the tribe is prevented from leapfrogging Graton with a Petaluma casino that’s closer to the lucrative Bay Area market for at least 10 years, now is the ideal time for the city and county to work with the tribe to get the best possible use out of the land.

Local officials should help the tribe work within existing zoning regulations on an agricultural project on the property such as a vineyard, dairy or compost facility or slaughterhouse. This would preserve the agricultural nature of the land and ensure that the tribe receives an economic benefit from their property over the next decade.

While it’s hard to predict the economic climate 10 years from now, and the county may be able to perpetually renegotiate deals that forestall a Petaluma casino a decade at a time, it is nearly impossible to get a deal that would prevent a casino in perpetuity. The gaming compact that the Dry Creek tribe signed with the governor allows them to operate two casinos.

The only way to permanently prevent a second casino in Petaluma would be a repeal of Proposition 1A, the 2000 measure California voters passed that allowed gambling on Indian lands. Prop. 1A, which was designed to give tribes an economic boost from their traditional homelands, has led to the practice of so-called “reservation shopping,” whereby tribes purchase property well beyond their ancestral boundaries in order to develop more profitable gaming enterprises.

Perhaps it is time to put a moratorium on casinos in California. Until we do, the threat of a Petaluma casino remains very real.

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