DeLeo to address Revere chamber

REVERE – Local merchants look to Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo Thursday to outline ways the city can survive, even prosper, in the face of reduced state spending and the recession.DeLeo is scheduled to address the Revere Chamber of Commerce at 7:30 a.m. at the Four Points Sheraton with the state of the economy his main topic.Two cuts in state aid forced Mayor Thomas Ambrosino to reduce city spending by laying off city workers and agreeing on salary increase deferrals with city workers, but local merchants have resisted the mayor’s call for an increase in the meals tax as a source of additional local revenue.”We want to know, what does the speaker have on the agenda as far as other ways communities can help themselves?” Chamber Director Laurie Leone said.Ambrosino during the summer told City Council members and merchants the city needs the 75 cents per $100 tax on meals and an additional 2 percent hotel and motel tax to raise $900,000 in estimated revenue over the next year from the taxes “to survive.”Even with extra money from meals and motel taxes, Ambrosino said the city must draw on reserve funds to bridge a $2 million gap in the city plan for the budget year that began July 1.DeLeo and fellow Revere legislator Kathi-Anne Reinstein have supported since 2003 installing slot machines at Wonderland Greyhound Park and Suffolk Downs. The proposal gained added urgency with approval by voters last November of a January 2010 deadline for halting dog racing at Wonderland.Legislators sympathetic to the plight on Wonderland and another track in Raynham have proposed altering state law to allow betting at both tracks on live broadcasts of races at out of state tracks.Expanded gambling could be debated by legislators as early as this fall with the aim of capturing some of the $900 million that Massachusetts residents spend in Connecticut resort casinos each year.