This just in. A Las Vegas-based consortium, Gambling
Unlimited, announced plans earlier today to build a
floating gambling barge on Ames' Ada Hayden Lake.
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"Ames property owners will love this,"
Unlimited President Larry Dupes said. "We are going
to be bringing in tax dollars by the bucketload and
dumping them on this city. I wouldn't be surprised
to see the property tax rate in Ames drop to zero.
In fact, we might even do better than that -instead
of paying taxes to the city, Ames residents might be
getting a check back from the city every month. It
all depends on how many losers we can attract to the
barge."
The gambling proposal needs approval from the
Ames City Council, which Dupes acknowledged won't be
easy. But he was confident. "We are prohibited by
law from 'giving anything of value' to elected
officials," he said, "but there's nothing the matter
with offering some special incentives."
For example, he said that all council members
who supported the proposal would have a room on the
barge named after them. "It means we could have the
'Matt Goodman's Good'n Plenty,' where we would serve
gyros and things. Or the barge's counting house
might be named after Russ Cross, a banker. We'll put
all their names in lights," he said.
Dupes is taking advantage of the Iowa
Legislature's recent decision to liberalize state
gaming laws. No only did the Legislature abolish the
requirement that a gambling barge ever had to leave
the dock, but it also eliminated any age
restrictions.
"The dropping of the age restriction was key,"
Dupes said. The legislature was responding to the
finding that Iowans were avoiding the table games
and going straight to the slots because they were
embarrassed to admit they didn't know how to play
the games. Blackjack just stumped them, a study
found.
Dupes said Gambling Unlimited planned to
address the ignorance problem through early
intervention.
"We are going to be busing youngsters to the
barge from every elementary school in Story County
and giving them a gambling primer so as adults they
won't freeze up when they hear 'Texas Holdem' or
'craps.'
"No child," Dupes said, "will be left behind."
He said Gambling Unlimited expects teacher
support because it will be running age-appropriate
table games. For example, kindergartners will be
betting on games like "Go Fish" or "Chutes and
Ladders" before advancing to "Old Maid" and "Candyland."
Checkers and "Chickenfoot" will be reserved for
third- and fourth-graders, he said.
"It will be a well-articulated gambling
curriculum for the elementary student," he promised.
"And to show we have a heart," Dupes said, "we are
going to cap their losses."
No kindergartner or first-grader will be
allowed to lose more than $1 per visit, while
second-graders will be stopped at $2, third-graders
at $3, and so forth.
"Don't you just love the symmetry of this," he
said.
In liberalizing Iowa's gambling laws, the
legislature used Wisconsin as its model. Decades ago
Wisconsin decided to make higher education
accessible to all citizens of the state, no matter
where they lived. This became known as "The
Wisconsin Idea."
Iowa, instead of education, has chosen to
saturate itself with gambling, deciding that every
Iowan should be "within a loud hello of a game of
chance." This has become known as "The Iowa Idea."
The Iowa law mandates that "at least one
gambling opportunity" be offered in each of the
state's 99 counties. The law further states that
should private interests not step forward to provide
gambling in a particular county, that the
supervisors in that county must offer at least two
dozen slot machines and one table game in the
courthouse basement.
The legislature also understood that its
liberalization will create legions of new gambling
addicts but it addressed that concern by mandating
that such services be offered "in immediate
adjacency" to any gambling facility.
At Ada Hayden, for instance, addicts will be
able to get treatment in the picnic shelter on the
north shore.
"This really shows the humanity of the
legislature," Dupes said. "No addict will be left
out in the cold."
Dupes said Unlimited also planned to take
advantage of another provision in the law that
allows one satellite gambling site per county. He
said the consortium had been in discussions with ISU
President Gregory Geoffroy regarding outfitting a
small gambling boat on Lake LaVerne.
"It might be something like one of those
cigarette boats that President Bush likes to run off
the coast of Maine," he said. "We'd have a few
slots, one table game and a lot of horsepower and
testosterone. It would help take the mind off that
midterm."
Dupes said that ISU had also agreed to offer
two introductory courses in gambling, which could
grow into a gaming major.
"We've more or less gotten approval for
'Beginning Shuffling, Cutting and Dealing' for next
year with 'The Language of the Table: Snake Eyes,
Box Cars and Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes' offered
the following year."
But Dupes said Geoffroy was balking at another
of Unlimited's requests - changing the university's
name to Iowa State University of Gambling, Science
and Technology.
"It might be that he's amenable to 'Science,
Technology and Gambling,' but we'll just have to
wait and see. There's such pent-up support for
gambling in this state that I just don't see how he
can deny us."
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