Bloomington approves gambling expansion

The City Council of Bloomington approved a measure that expands gambling by ending a moratorium on video gaming licences.

US.- The Bloomington City Council voted on Monday night to allow for eight additional video gambling licences. The vote ended 8-1 in favour of allowing the expansion and lifting a moratorium on video gaming licences.

The vote on lifting the moratorium was practically unanimous, but the decision to limit the number of video terminals in large truck shops to five passed in a 5-4 vote.

Pete Pointius, director of B&B Amusement of Illinois, said that the city was losing thousands of dollars. He says that Bloomington encouraged truck drivers to go elsewhere, wglt.org reported. “These are all transient people passing through that Bloomington will be passing on that revenue. The city will allow it to go down the road to truck stops that are outside the city limits; McLean, Lincoln, Maroa, Chenoa, Decatur, Farmer City, LeRoy, the list goes on,” Pontius said.

Council member Jamie Mathy said that the city is still eligible to add more terminals in the future. “But if we allow (more terminals) now, I don’t think there’s really a good mechanism where we can roll this back and say, ‘No, we allowed you to spend a whole bunch of money to make changes to your facility to allow for the extra machines at your facility, take all that out now, I’m sorry,” he said.