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Sure bet needs to be protected for area’s good Kevin blaum In the arena

Sunday November 30, 2008 | 12:00 AM

LAST FALL, municipalities in Luzerne County were scrambling to get their applications in to the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) for a slice of the $11 million pie established for health, safety and economic development projects in our region.

The annual fund was created by the state legislature and Gov. Ed Rendell in 2004 through a tax on each casino licensed in the commonwealth. It is a yearly tax on these mega-slot parlors to ensure some gambling losses get returned to our people and our region.

That was the plan and some good was accomplished in the first year of this important program.

Wilkes-Barre obtained $1 million for citywide surveillance cameras to keep streets safe. Kingston received $1.8 million to rebuild the Hoyt Library, which suffered a catastrophic roof collapse following a massive snowfall. Duryea got $800,000 for acid mine drainage remediation, while Pittston City and Plymouth Borough both were awarded more than a half million dollars for downtown revitalization. Good stuff.

However, too much of this valuable, local money was earmarked for an exit off Interstate 81 to state Route 315, which should have been the sole responsibility of the state Department of Transportation and the federal government.

Not a dime of local money was taken from Wilkes-Barre Township when we built the arena exit (Exit 168) off I-81. Nor should it have been.

Neither was Plains Township told to ante up when we constructed the omitted exits off the North Cross-Valley Expressway at River Street in the 1980s.

And let us not forget the $5 million dollars that DCED wanted to slip back to the casino for work on a former landfill it knowingly and intentionally purchased. Go figure. Thanks to state Sen. Ray Musto and state Rep. Ed Pashinski, this gift was at least spread out over five years.

I sometimes wonder if we as a community truly understand what an extraordinary opportunity this very large and perpetual local funding source presents to the people of the Wyoming Valley.

This $10 million, $11 million or even $12 million every year, for as long as people want to feed slot machines, is NOT meant to replace other funding, projects and exit ramps that should naturally come our way through the normal course of government business.

This money is meant to supplement — be in addition to, yet separate and very much apart from — the usual government programs and grants regularly and equally available to each municipality in Pennsylvania.

If the DCED is allowed to divert this (our) health, safety and economic development fund, established just for our area, to projects that should otherwise be funded by DCED dollars and other government or private funding, then we will have gained nothing. Worse than that, our state representatives will have been hoodwinked.

It was originally envisioned that this remarkable fund would do the big things. Could it not be used to help clean the river, attract investment, entice employers and create jobs?

We are now entering the second year of this rare and important funding mechanism. Local applications to DCED were due on Oct. 31. In addition to more Christmas money for a privately owned landfill and an exit for PennDOT under its PennDOT tree, we will soon learn what other projects are contained in these requests.

This annual money is a fine precision instrument needed to sculpt a better and brighter Wyoming Valley now and 50 years into the future. DCED must not use it as a dull ax to chop dollars into chum for a yearly feeding frenzy.

We need a plan.