Gambling profits should go to area roads: Azilda and Chelmsford councillors

City councillors from Azilda and Chelmsford say their communities were misled about gambling profits being spent on roads in the area.

And they say this opens up wounds left over from the amalgamation of Greater Sudbury, 15 years after it was formed.

This stems from the debate in the late 1990s over the expansion of casino gambling in Ontario.

The City of Sudbury turned the province down, but the Town of Rayside-Balfour did sign on to putting slot machines at the Sudbury Downs racetrack in Azilda and a 5 per cent cut of the action.

But shortly after, the town and the racetrack were amalgamated into the greater city.

Evelyn Dutrisacwas a town councillor in Rayside-Balfour at the time, but now represents Greater Sudbury Ward 4, which includes Azilda and the Donovan.

Dutrisac said her community was promised that casinocash would go to the areas roads, especially the widening of Municipal Road 35 between Chelmsford and Azilda.

"We were promised as a community," she said."We went for the slots and we knew that that money was going to bring us roads to our community and we're still waiting."

Dutrisac told her fellow councillors this week that it's an example of how amalgamation hasn't worked.

"We were told that we would get better. I'm looking at this and it doesn't seem to be getting better for municipal road 35. I'm saddened and disgusted."

At the other end of Municipal Road 35 inChelmsford, Ward 3 city councillor Gerry Montpellier saidhe's surprised to learn that slots money hasn't been squirrelled away for the project.

"The citizens [have] always been under the understanding there was this magic bank of money being saved to four-lane this thing," he said, adding that many feel the two-lane section of the road is dangerous.

The four-laning is estimated to cost $29 million, but isn't on the city's list of road work planned for the next five years.

What is on the to-do list is $6.2 million worth of new road and fresh pavement under that two-lane section, scheduled for construction next year. Staff say that work will make it cheaper to widen the road in the future.

Dutrisac says she was also told by staff that the four-laning would happen this year, but staff say that's not the case and may have been a typo.