Residents split on slots in Revere

REVERE – Lisa Wynn is a Revere native whose views on bringing slot machines to local race tracks is tempered by her experience working aboard a casino boat.”I see all the trouble it can cause,” she said Wednesday.Steve DiChiara also lives in Revere and he sees the prospect of one-armed bandits filling the almost empty betting halls of Wonderland Greyhound Park as an idea whose time is long overdue.Local legislators and track owners have pushed to bring slot machines to tracks for five years but the Legislature has voted down the idea even with the revenue predictions about the hundreds of millions of dollars proponents claim slots will bring into state coffers.With 2009 underway, the view on slots has changed and two factors explain the shift. State Rep. Robert DeLeo’s ascent to the top job in the Massachusetts House has given him a leadership voice on slots and plummeting state revenues are making the money to be reaped by the state from gambling look all the more attractive.DeLeo vowed this week to keep slots, as well as casino gambling, on the discussion table as possible anecdotes to the state budget crisis. Linda Deangelo does not like the idea of turning to gambling to fix the state’s money problems. She thinks slots in Revere will be accompanied by traffic problems and other headaches.”I don’t think we need them,” she said.But local officials, faced with the loss of $1.2 million in state aid this year and double or more that amount beginning in July when a new spending year starts, are looking for extra revenue sources.Mayor Thomas Ambrosino warned this week he will lay off seven municipal workers and not hire three police officers undergoing training. He also plans to reduce other city workers’ hours to save money.”This is not necessarily our last effort,” he said, warning that the budget message he delivers Feb. 9 to the City Council and via cable television to local residents will not be a happy one.