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Argo: Argo Town Council members are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to find every possible penny available to make the town’s budget work. In an attempt to protect the town’s Police and Fire departments, council members are trimming and eliminating other parts of the budget. And for now, they are doing this without electronic bingo gambling.
Earlier this year, Mayor Paul Jennings and a couple of the Town Council members claimed the city would have to cut the Police and Fire departments if an electronic bingo gambling facility was not opened.
Various legal roadblocks developed and electronic bingo gambling has yet to work out for the town. Argo sits in both St. Clair and Jefferson counties, so Jennings and the town attorney have worked on two different ordinances allowing electronic bingo gambling. But when Jefferson County Sheriff Mike Hale issued new electronic bingo gambling rules only allowing facilities to operate two days a week, Jennings halted his efforts on an ordinance allowing electronic bingo gambling in the Jefferson County part of Argo.
“We were just looking to find ways to make the budget work,” he said, noting he will revisit the ordinance after he sees what really happens when the Jefferson County electronic bingo gambling regulations go into effect Oct. 9. And while it is unclear if Roadhouse Gaming Systems LLC would still be the business Jennings chooses to work with if he decides to pursue an electronic bingo ordinance again, he did say he didn’t anticipate working with John McCleod.
McCleod is one of the owners of Roadhouse Gaming Systems and has been the main person working with Argo to legalize electronic bingo gambling. McCleod was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison for grand larceny and cocaine possession, according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Bessemer: The Bessemer City Council voted 4–2 with one abstention to pass an electronic bingo gambling ordinance. At least City Council President Earl Cochran said they did after several people questioned the action taken by the council Oct. 6.
In a circus-type atmosphere lasting more than five hours, council members worked their way through almost 30 agenda items, yelling and screaming at each other and the city and council attorneys along the way. Some council members and one citizen also took verbal shots at members of Canaan Baptist Church, Bessemer, who were among the more than 50 people in attendance.
When it came time to discuss the electronic bingo gambling ordinance, the council decided to have a “first read” on the ordinance because “it is quite different” from the original ordinance passed by the council and vetoed by Mayor Edward May earlier this summer, said Councilwoman Louise Alexander.
Cochran said after the Sept. 30 meeting that the ordinance was the same as the previous ordinance, but it was reported in the Oct. 6 meeting that revisions had taken place three times between the two meetings. The last revision came as late as six hours prior to the Oct. 6 meeting, but none of the revised versions noted what had changed from the previous versions.
Aaron Killings, city attorney for Bessemer, noted concern about not having time to review the revisions.
“They all appear to be the same on the surface, but unless you do a close comparison you don’t know what changes have been made,” he said. “When reading a legal document, one word can change the entire document.”
Killings also confirmed the ordinance had changed from the original version he and council attorney Greg Harris prepared earlier.
Cochran called for the vote on the electronic bingo gambling ordinance as soon as it came up but was reminded by Killings that the council had not had the first reading on the ordinance.
Councilwoman Dorothy Davidson, a member of the committee that drafted the ordinance, argued there had been a first reading the week before, but she was reminded that she was the one who had said she had not read the ordinance during the Sept. 30 meeting. It was because she did not have time to review the ordinance that Cochran said he decided to postpone addressing it until the Oct. 6 meeting.
The council voted on the ordinance immediately following the first read, which included verbally agreeing to change the minimum distance requirement of electronic bingo gambling facilities from 500 feet to 1,000 feet from the property line of schools, churches, day cares, residences and recreational areas such as parks. The original ordinance had 2,000 feet but was changed by the committee to 500 feet because they realized “you wouldn’t be able to put [a facility] in the north side of Bessemer in my district because every other corner has a church,” Alexander said.
The ordinance allows facilities to stay open all hours except from 12:01 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays and would charge a $2,500 annual permit fee for operators. The operator would pay the city $300 per machine per month.
At press time, representatives of the mayor said they anticipated he would veto this ordinance. May did not attend the Oct. 6 meeting. Some council members, as well as Killings, Harris and several Bessemer citizens, were also reviewing the actions of the council to clarify whether the action taken was legal.
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