SAULT STE. MARIE – Centre Wellington recently received another $574,368 for hosting OLG slots at Grand River Raceway.
The payment was the municipality’s second-quarter share of slots revenue. To date, Centre Wellington has received more than $12.9-million in non-tax gaming revenue.
OLG slots at Grand River opened on Dec. 4, 2003. Since opening, the facility has attracted more than 4.1 million visitors. Council uses the revenue would be used for infrastructure projects. Because of the number of grant programs available, the township council has leveraged millions of dollars for infrastructure without have to borrow to do that.
In total, OLG issued more than $18.8-million in second-quarter non-tax gaming revenue payments to 23 municipalities that host OLG casinos and OLG slots-at-racetrack facilities. To date, OLG has distributed $724.7-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 number. Funds are used at the discretion of the municipality.
Race tracks and their horse people also share the revenue generated by the slots program, 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 $3.24-billion has been shared between racetrack owners and their horse people.
