CENTRE WELLINGTON – The OLG's quarterly payment to Centre Wellington expected this July will be impacted due to the closure of Elora’s Elements Casino Grand River since mid-March.
The OLG makes quarterly payments based on a percentage of revenue from their gaming sites from host municipalities. The town’s last payout was $572,725 in April.
Mayor Kelly Linton said the town doesn’t rely on OLG funds for their operating budget.
“We never use the money that we get for any operations ever,” Linton said. “OLG funding goes into capital projects and only the subsequent year.”
The mayor said these payments typically work out to around $2.1 million per year for the township.
The revenue from OLG payments are put into a reserve to fund projects such as road improvements for the following year. All casinos in Ontario have been closed since the beginning of this quarter, April 1 to June 30.
Tony Bitonti, OLG external communications director, said in an email that there has been no gaming revenue during the closure period and therefore payments to municipalities will be impacted.
Phase one of Ontario's re-opening did not include casinos and the details of the next phases have yet to be announced.
Bitonti said the casinos will reopen when permitted to by the province and service providers responsible for day to day operations are ready to open and operate in a manner that compliese with appropriate safety protocols.
"We are working collaboratively with the service providers and the regulator, the Alcohol and Gaming Commision of Ontario to ensure appropriate health and safety protocols, informed by public health, will be in place for the protection of all staff and customers as part of the casino re-opening plans," Bitonti said by email.
The mayor said he was unsure what July’s payment will look like but there will likely be an impact to projects in 2021.
“It might impact our projects for 2021, they might have to shift to 2022,” Linton said.
“Then 2022 might have to shift out to 2023. There might be a cascading effect there but we won’t know until we get payout what the impact on our capital budget will be.”
Linton said the town will have a better sense of what the forecast is when they begin looking at 2021’s budget.
Centre Wellington’s first meeting about the 2021 budget is June 15.
