Centre Wellington Township received $538,320 Jan. 20 for hosting OLG Slots at Grand River Raceway.
The payment was for the municipality’s third-quarter share of slots revenue from October to December.
To date, Centre Wellington has received more than $15.6 million in non-tax gaming revenue. Payments are made on a quarterly basis according to the government fiscal year, which runs April to March. The slots at Grand River opened on Dec. 4 2003. Since opening, the facility has attracted more than 4.9 million visitors.
“The partnership between OLG gaming sites and the 23 host communities continues to provide considerable advantages to people across Ontario,” said Ontario Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan. “Municipalities are enabled to make improvements to infrastructure and community programs by the sharing of gaming revenues, while the sites themselves create employment opportunities and stimulate tourism within our province.”
The payment to the township is likely to drop for the next round of profit sharing. The government and OLG has changed the accounting rules and that will cost the township close to $70,000 a year, while increases the share of profits for the provincial governments.
In total, OLG issued more than $18 million in third-quarter non-tax gaming revenue payments to 23 municipalities that host OLG Casinos and slots at racetracks.
To date, OLG has distributed $815 million to those host municipalities.
Each municipality hosting an OLG Slots-at-racetrack facility receives five per cent of the gaming facility’s gross slot machine revenue from the first 450 slot machines and two per cent from any additional machines over that.
Centre Wellington uses the money for infrastructure projects.
Tracks and their horse men also share revenue from the slots, with 20 per cent of gross slot machine revenue split evenly between the two groups. Since the launch of the program in 1998, more than $3.67 billion has been shared between racetrack owners and their horse organizations.
In 2011-12, the province will allocate $120 million in gaming revenue to support charities through the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF).
