Those were the words that Mayor Carlo DeMaria used at last Wednesday’s press conference by Wynn Resorts describing Somerville Mayor Joseph Curatone legal filing to stop Wynn from building their casino in Everett.
We agree.
After years of deliberation, Wynn was awarded the casino license for this area less than two years ago and has done more than any other company in the last 50 years to clean up a site that was a brownfield and that was leeching toxins into the Mystic River.
We wonder how many of the companies located at Assembly Mall can make the same claim.
We are not going to question the fact that Curatone may be opposed to casinos on a personal ground. We are not going to question that Wynn Casino will add more car traffic to Sullivan Square.
However, the car traffic from Wynn has been shown to be about one-third less than the traffic that a fully developed Assembly Mall will produce on a daily basis. If we accept the fact that Sullivan Square is overtaxed by cars now, before the rest of Assembly Mall is added, then what is Curatone’s solution? It would seem that he says, “Let’s just add the cars, because Assembly Square development is good for Somerville and let the traffic jams be damned.”
By the way, not one of these companies in Assembly Square ever has paid, or will pay, one dime in mitigation to help improve traffic flow in Sullivan Square. On the other hand, Wynn has pledged $25 million to help fund the solutions of fixing the traffic issues in Sullivan Square.
As far as his personal conviction of being against the casino, we would like to remind Curatone that a majority of residents in the state supported casinos in 2014. As a democracy, we live by the majority except when it suits two-bit politicians like Joe Curatone.
In our dreams, we hope that a source for the poor water quality of the Mystic River can be found originating in Somerville and that Joe Curtone will have to find millions of dollars in his city budget to fix it. And when he goes to Governor Charlie Baker for help in funding a cleanup, that Baker reminds him of his playing Boss Tweed-style politics and shows him the door. Then we will be able to say, “There is a higher justice.”