A new report by the Missouri Gaming Association, a trade group, said the casino has paid $28,968,675 in gaming tax revenue to the home dock community since its June 24, 1994, original opening. The association’s 2012 “state of the industry” showed that the casino’s revenue ranked higher than gaming totals for St. Louis County; the city of Caruthersville, Mo.; and the city of LaGrange, Mo. The city of Boonville, Mo., ranked ahead with slightly more than $43 million in host tax revenue.

The association said the revenue allotted to host communities funds such vital public endeavors as roads, bridges, parks, police and fire protection projects.

Carolyn Harrison, director of administrative services for the city of St. Joseph, said gaming revenue is averaging a slight downturn of $85,300 monthly in home dock revenue.
“Since September, the gaming revenue has been running lower than the previous year,” Ms. Harrison said.

Using its current financial system, which tracks the revenue back to 1999 — the year the casino opened at its present site — the city has received a total of $12,023,500 in revenues.
“Between the city and county, that would be $24,047,000 — or about a million dollars a year,” she added.

Ms. Harrison said tracking data for the first five years is not readily accessible, but likely would conform with the association’s statistics.

Casino general manager Craig Travers said the business’s revenue forecasts continue to follow information compiled by the Missouri Gaming Commission, the body which regulates the industry in the state. That assessment comes despite the challenges of winter weather and the flood of 2011, which shuttered operations for three months that summer.
The casino now remains on a good pace and is back on track toward meeting its annual financial goals, according to Mr. Travers.

“March was very good,” he said in one recent illustration. “We beat our projections in March. We beat last year in March and we were very close to our budgeted projection.”
Winter storms slowed activity in the casino for January and February. Yet the casino’s net passenger and admissions counts both were strong in March, he said, although the passenger count itself was slightly down by comparison.

The casino produced slightly more than $1 million in home dock revenue for St. Joseph in fiscal year 2011, Ms. Harrison said. That contrasts with almost $832,000 for fiscal 2012 — which mirrors the closure wrought by the flood.

On average for fiscal 2011, the casino amassed just more than $91,000 monthly for the city. For the shortened fiscal 2012, the monthly average amounted to more than $92,000.
The association’s report said the state’s casino industry created $386 million in gaming tax revenue last year. It said Missouri is seventh in total state gaming tax revenue among casino markets nationally and seventh in consumer spending in terms of commercial casino gaming.

Gaming revenue nationwide hit an all-time high of $65.8 billion last year after several years of declining or flat figures, said a just-released report by industry consultant RubinBrown.

St. Joseph News-Press ©April 2013