TULALIP — 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 Friday.
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 Friday. 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 are trying to determine how to meet a mandate by tribal members, who voted two years ago to take a $10,000-per-person, one-time payout from casino profits. Some tribal members are unhappy that the money hasn’t been paid yet.
"We’re trying to accommodate that request, and some things will have to take a cut in order to do that," Parks said, adding that the overpass was one such project.
The tribe’s constitution requires that it to meet all financial obligations before making per-capita payments, he said.
"It is virtually impossible to get a one-time payout," he said of the tribes’ 3,600 members. "There’s no way we could pay out $38 million in one year."
On Oct. 25, the Tulalips will have a general council meeting to determine how the money would be paid or what projects might be shelved. The money possibly could be paid out over several years, or tribal members could rescind the vote, he said.
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.
"With the new casino, we have debts that have to be retired. That means we have to be mindful of our expenditures and our commitments."
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 last Saturday. 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 new ones, 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 tribe was getting ready to hire a coordinator to research the school, which now "is probably a few years out," Parks said.
Also, the Tulalips are close to signing an agreement with the Chelsea Group to develop the mall, McCoy said.
"Because of the overall economy of the United States, we’ve had a lot of folks say, ‘We want to come but we have to wait awhile,’ McCoy said.
"We’re shuffling our deck to see how things pop out."
Reporter Cathy Logg: 425-339-3437 or logg@heraldnet.com.
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