THINK ABOUT IT! Milford Is Great Without a Casino

Dear Members of the Milford community:

As a lifelong Milfordian I have followed with great interest the casino proposal from its early stages.  The flaws in this proposal are so vast that the benefits cannot even remotely outweigh them. It’s not even close.  We do not need a solution to a problem that we don’t currently have.  Our tax base is already diverse.  Our tax rates are already modest when measured against other towns, and the residential tax benefits from a casino, I promise you, will be minimal, and not enough for you to support a casino.

We already have exceptional services, whether from police, fire, waste removal, leaf pick up, schools, trails, health care, at town hall, and on and on…all for reasonable taxes. What are we trying to save ourselves from?  It may be true that you have to grow as a matter of course, but casino growth is not real growth when it creates problems that have to be fixed.  Fixing a self created problem is not growth.  It is not what we are looking for from an urban planning perspective.  Chief executives from large companies will avoid Milford if a casino were to pass, which creates an enormous reliance on a single taxpayer and if that taxpayer were to destroy us, or financially sputter, we would have no choice but to accept the destruction.  If any town says a casino saved it, it is only because they had little to begin with.

Milford is already exceptional – the people are great, the quality of life is good, we work together, and if we properly plan, we will attract real business, not business that essentially lives off of the success of others.  Foxboro was smart, East Boston was smart, Palmer was smart.  They understood. And although I love the Patriots, I would not want my town to feel as though a Patriots game were being played here every single day of the year.

DAVID C. MORGANELLI

Milford