110833841
To the Editor:
Tom Cardella’s accurate and honest casino article (“We got handed a turkey,” Nov. 27) hit the nail right on the head. Thank you for being so rational.
Judy (Cerrone) is director of District 1 and the vice president of the Sports Complex Special Services District executive board, and Barbara Capozzi is director of District 2 and treasurer of the SCSSD executive board. We are hard-working volunteers and spend many hours fighting to maintain the quality of life of the residents south of Packer Avenue who live in our two communities.
District 1 comprises 221 residences between 13th and Broad streets south of Packer, three blocks from the proposed Live! Casino. District 2 comprises 1,250 residences and is a few blocks farther west and is already heavily impacted by the traffic that the sports complex generates now. Our convent, rectory, the Mastery Charter Elementary School and Stella Maris Church are within two blocks of Ninth and Packer. Placing a fifth large entertainment venue — this one would be open 24/7 and with many negative and dangerous problems — so close to already impacted residences and the above mentioned children, many new young families and 60 percent older adults is insane and immoral.
We testified at length before the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, along with other district directors, obviously to no avail. We guess they call that a Dog and Pony Show. All our local politicians have a non-voting seat at every SCSSD board meeting that they attend or send a Representative. Councilman [Kenyatta] Johnson was present in November 2012 with the other elected officials or their representative when the voting board members first voted unanimously to oppose any casino south of Oregon Avenue. That unanimous opposition has been discussed at every district meeting since ’12. Our opposition should be no surprise to anyone who is listening and paying attention to their constituents unless they are living under a rock.
Since none of our elected officials testified in opposition to this site before the PGCB or gave us any support knowing our unanimous position in opposition, we had no reason to invite them to our community meeting at Stella Maris Hall one week before the final decision. With state Sen. Larry Farnese, Rep. Maria Donatucci and Johnson now sending letters to our people trying to shift the blame to us for the casino site, it is now time to throw this negative casino decision right back on them where it belongs. If they could agree on that united front now against the community leaders, why could they NOT have agreed to the same united front to testify on our behalf against this already heavily impacted, proposed seven-acre monstrosity.
We support and have always supported the unions, especially as they built Wells Fargo Center, Lincoln Financial Field, Citizens Bank Park and, most recently, Xfinity Live! in our backyard. However, there were two fabulous Center City sites that would have afforded even more building jobs and would have captured out-of- town visitors attending the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
Again, thank you for your logical well-reasoned article.
Judy Cerrone and
Barbara Capozzi
South Philadelphia
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