Casino Referendum Will Happen

Breaking news: City Clerk and City Solicitor Accept Our Petitions & Council President introduces our referendum

As reported in today's Philadelphia Inquirer: "City Council members will have to decide whether voters in the May primary will be able to ban casinos from within 1,500 feet of any home, school, or church, a measure that could unravel slot plans for Philadelphia. "The Council vote, which is likely to be held next month, is required because anti-casino activists succeeded in getting a minimum 20,000 signatures verified by the city, Council President Anna C. Verna said.

"Casino Free Philadelphia, the group that proposed the measure and collected more than 27,000 signatures, wants to use the ballot question to change the City Charter so that casinos could be built only in exclusively industrial areas." (or, to be more accurate, anywhere not nearby schools, churches, mosques, synagogues or other residential-use facilities)

Since our petitions were accepted by the City Clerk and the City Solicitor's office, this means that:

1) This legally-binding referendum has been looked at by the city's lawyers and is approved, from their perspective, to be voted on by Philadelphians (legally speaking, something closer to, "with no certainty can the City Solicitor say this is not in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution or laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania");

2) Now starts the 7-day period when casinos could challenge the City Clerk's acceptance of our signatures, and try to stop voters from having a say on casinos; we suspect they may go this route;

3) Today Council president Anna Verna introduced our referendum and a hearing is scheduled for it -- March 2nd at 10:00am.

Therefore, the actions to take:

1) Write to all your Councilpersons to support the referendum when it comes to a vote; let them know we are watching them and will watch carefully their votes. (Note that at this point at councilpersons have been briefed and have received letters and calls from us about this issue.) You can see the status of councilmembers (and click to write to them one at a time) at: www.casinofreephila.org Or send faxes to all your city councilmembers automatically from Hallwatch.org

2) Very important: Join us for the referendum's hearing on March 2nd at 10am, room 400. We will not go as long as we did last time, but plan to be there to show our community's support for passage of this referendum. What: City Council hearing on our referendum Where: Room 400, City Hall When: Friday, March 2nd at 10:00am

3) We are working on our structure, to be more transparent internally and to be better at helping people plug-in to our campaigns. We are having a major strategy retreat on March 3rd -- please come and find out how you can get more involved and help us tighten up as we move into the next phase of our campaign work to protect our neighborhoods! What: Strategy Retreat Where: TBA When: Saturday, March 3rd from 10am to 2pm (lunch provided)