Letter: Removing neighborhood slots an injustice to their patrons

Saturday, Feb. 21, 1998 | 3:52 a.m.

Our illustrious Mayor Jan Laverty Jones is not "playing with a full deck." I don't see how she can justify removing slot machines from grocery stores, convenience markets, car washes and wherever they legally exist besides casinos.

Does she realize that seniors and others without transportation play those machines either because they are convenient or they simply do not wish to go to casinos?

Those establishments have long met legal qualifications for placing up to 15 machines there. To remove them now -- after years -- is a great injustice to the establishments and to those who patronize them. I truthfully do not know even one person who objects to machines in those locations.

To eliminate them from future establishments and "phase out" locations where they currently legally exist would be another example of a police state usurping powers that they should not be allowed to take. Our citizenry has already lost far too many of our rights and privileges. Jan Jones, on the city level, and the county commisions who agree with her, on that level, are "rowing upstream with one oar out of the water."

Let's legally eliminate all business undertakings that Jan Jones has her fingers in. Let's eliminate her livelihood under the pretense that it is "not in the best interest of the public."

Although not on a national level, this reminds me of the prohibition laws of 1919. They were not in the best interest of the people, and they did not work and were repealed. The citizenry should rebel over this pipedream and resolve not to let it happen.

Glen J. Gillette

archive