Davenport's casino plans have seen a whirlwind of activity in recent weeks.
The bus trip to Dubuque, hours of hearings from developers, decisions being made on how to run the City's casino board.
Getting in the casino game can cause a bit of information overload.
That's why city leaders spent a big chunk of their council meeting getting themselves up to date on where the casino purchase plans stand.
There's still many decisions to be made, but the council hopes the information gathered so far can help bring more money into the city's bank account, and ease the burden on property owners.
"The city and community have been moving forward with community owned gaming since 1985," says Davenport City Administrator Craig Malin.
He says Dubuque's model is what Davenport wants to copy. Generating gaming money to bring down property taxes.
"The gaming profits from the community owned casino stay in the community," says Malin.
Profits Davenport Mayor Bill Gluba says can be spent on a variety of organizations around town. The Figgie, the Adler, and the Putnam all receive city subsidies. Money Gluba says the city doesn't have laying around.
"A lot of these things were started years ago were well intended, the Adler Theatre is a beautiful facility, but back in 2003 apparently there was a an agreement made that come 2014, the existing structure would change and the city would cough up 2.5 million dollars."
Alderman Jeff Justin says the Dubuque model shows a city owned casino can work. Putting more services back into the community without squeezing property owners dry.
"Just the transformation that has happened in Dubuque since they acquired that casino, boy the impact on the property taxes," says Justin.
He says the next step needed is for the Riverboat Development Authority to approve the city's new management structure.
"Hopefully the RDA will be agreeable to the city ownership and we hope that a majority of them will vote in favor of the agreement with the DCIC," says Justin.
The Davenport Community Improvement Corporation approved expanding its membership from seven to nine board members.
Those additional board members would be picked by the DCIC rather than the City Council.
The Council will need to approve that decision.
