Published November 2003

Tulalips: $200M
casino revenue not enough

By Cathy Logg
Herald Writer

The Tulalip Tribes’ new casino is expected to make close to $200 million this year. But tribal officials say that isn’t enough.

Some projects paid for by casino profits likely will be put on hold or reprioritized because of overprojections of gambling revenue, Les Parks, a tribal board member and chairman of the business committee, said in October.

Two projects most likely to be delayed are the 116th Street overpass on I-5 and a hotel-convention center planned adjacent to the new casino at Quil Ceda Village.

The tribe agreed to pay for the design work on the new overpass and to fund construction if the state and federal government don’t come up with the money. That hasn’t changed, but it could be years away now, Parks said.

Construction of the hotel-convention center also won’t occur as quickly as planned, due in part to a study the tribe commissioned. The study of hotel occupancy rates indicated that a new hotel isn’t needed yet, said John McCoy, Quil Ceda Village general manager and a state representative.

He recommended to the board that the hotel not be opened until 2008, although no decision has been made, McCoy said. The Tulalips first need to work with others to market Snohomish County and increase tourism, he added.

Tribal officials have met monthly with the state Department of Transportation on the overpass project. The tribe is funding the $2 million design project and had hoped a new overpass could be completed in 2005.

“For the past two months, the design process has been slowing down,” said Methqual Abu-Najem, the state’s project engineer.

Parks said the tribe is seeking local, state and federal funds to help pay for the project. If the Tulalips have to pay for the entire project, “it would be years down the road,” he added.

The Tulalips also have had to deal with a mandate by tribal members, who voted two years ago to take a $10,000-per-person, one-time payout from casino profits for the tribes’ 3,600 members.

On Oct. 25, tribal members agreed not to make the payout this year after tribal leaders argued that to do so would lead to severe cuts in programs. But they voted to add $1,000 to the $2,000 annual checks members are scheduled to receive in November.

The tribes' constitution requires it to meet all financial obligations before making per-capita payments, according to Parks.

Tribal General Manager Linda Jones said the Tulalips are dealing with large debt payments.

“We’re able to make them. We’re making a little more than we did in the old casino, but in the old casino we owned the building,” she said.

Parks said casino revenues are fine.

“They have met the projections the tribe had outlined (with its bankers). We are meeting or exceeding those numbers,” Parks said.

The problem, he said, is that “overzealous” casino managers inflated the revenue projections, contrary to what departmental staff were saying.

“It hasn’t hurt us that much. It caused us to go back and rework our current budgets, something that we do regularly,” Parks said.

In mid-September, the Tulalips convened a general council on a petition for a vote of no confidence in Chuck James, the casino’s chief operating officer.

“It was a close vote,” Parks said, but James prevailed.

But that vote had nothing to do with the revenue projections, Parks said. Tribal officials described the cause as philosophical differences in how the casino was run.

Even though James survived that vote, he was fired by the board in early October. James said casino employees were told he was fired because casino revenues and morale were down.

The Tulalips now have received a petition calling for a vote of no confidence in the tribes’ chairman, Herman Williams Jr.

Some tribal members have complained that not enough casino revenue goes to tribal services.

When Parks was elected to the board in 1996, the casino contributed $8 million to tribal operations, he said. In 2002, more than $50 million went to tribal services, allowing many programs to expand and many others to be created, he said.

Among the new programs, the Tulalips now build new homes for four tribal elders each year, and about four years ago, the tribe purchased a new computer system for every tribal home, both on and off the reservation.

The tribe is about to issue a recall on those computers, which will be replaced with new ones, Parks said.

The Tulalips packaged the casino financing with construction of a new health clinic, a wastewater treatment plant, and roads and utilities in Quil Ceda Village, Parks said.

That was the first of many project phases. In addition to the business park package, the Tulalips have identified $450 million in projects over the next 10 years, he said.

Among the others are the hotel and convention center, an upscale mall, a theme and water park, an amphitheater and a K-12 education campus.

The Tulalips are close to signing an agreement with the Chelsea Group to develop the mall, McCoy said.

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