Bingo Games Save the City of San Pablo
The city of San Pablo in California, home to the Pomo Indian tribe, has managed to pull itself out of a financial crisis with the help of "slots style" bingo games. Last summer the tribe introduced bingo machines to the San Pablo's casino and all of a sudden the city's tax revenues were tripled. This enabled the city to pay its debts and even to cover daycare costs with the help of the revenues produced by bingo games.
San Pablo resides next to major cities as San Francisco and Berkeley. Its roots go back to the 17th century when the Spanish government in Mexico sent missionaries to the area; the name of the city was given in 1811 by Ramón Abella, a priest from Mission Dolores. The city grew over the past two centuries to a modern city that is surrounded by various nature parks that attracts numerous visitors every year, but last year the city's debts grew rapidly after major investments in San Pablo's infrastructure.
San Pablo's casino was fit to produce high revenues but it seemed that the usual card games and slots were not enough to pull San Pablo out of the mud.
The Moroccan-themed casino of San Pablo employs over 400 people and it was ready to pull its weight into the task of helping the city's budget. The casino's staff came out with the idea of brining slots-style bingo machines and opening a bingo hall to meet the high demand for bingo games in the area.
From the first moment that the bingo games were operational in San Pablo's casino the budget cut from the casino had tripled and as for now most of $9 million revenues come from bingo games and now there are even talks of launching online bingo games to the Web to increase even more the revenues made by bingo games.
San Pablo paid its debts and was able to invest much more in the community by lowering services' taxes and hiring additional police force, planning new sports-center and another community center for culture. It can be clearly state that bingo games saved the city of San Pablo and benefited the entire community.
Mark W. Felten, News Editor. 26/2/2006