Bingo, again…again?

The Ferriday town council — or at least, three of the members of the town council — have called a meeting to discuss the introduction of an electronic bingo ordinance for Thursday night. Supposedly, they wanted to move the venue to the Arcade Theater to accomodate the expected large number of people in attendance, but DA candidate Andy Magoun will be having a campaign rally there, so the meeting will be at the Ferriday Town Hall as usual.

It’s interesting that three of the members want to revisit the issue so soon after the last public hearing, which was more like a public flaying of the guys who proposed the idea by everyone from ministers to a woman who said she would rather pick cotton on her knees than see bingo in town. What will be more interesting is what they actually do during the meeting — after all, three council members is enough to pass an ordinance.

Edit: After a lot of hemming and hawing and a good deal of public outrage at the meeting, none of the town council members could bring themselves to introduce the motion that would have allowed bingo in. Not only was the meeting a waste of time, but it effectively killed bingo indefinitely.

A second chance for bingo?

Ah, bingo is an issue in Ferriday again.

About a year and a quarter ago, a couple of entrepreneurs came to town with a suggestion that the town allow them to open a charity bingo parlor or three. If you’re not familiar with Louisiana’s charity bingo parlor system, the parlors have to give so much of their income to local charities, so much to the town and then they get to keep whatever profit is left over after all the rest of the wealth is redistributed. There was also some funny business in the 2007 proposed Ferriday ordinance about how two separate locations can be considered one location if they’re within a certain distance of each other, a clever if dubiously ethical way to sneak multiple halls into town while being able to say that the ordinance only allowed two locations to open in town, period. When the issue was brought to a vote, the town council voted not to allow it. A similar move was attempted with police jury, with similar results. 

But with a new mayor comes new hope, at least in the minds of bingo parlor owners.

The Ferriday town council had a special meeting Tuesday to take care of some housecleaning issues and to have a public hearing about the bingo. The public, or at least the public present, was not pleased with the idea. Tuesday’s meeting was only a public hearing, and so no official action was taken. If the bingo hall is to go in, it will have to be rushed in, thanks to new legislation signed by Gov. Bobby Jindal that pretty much requires the hall to be in place by Aug. 15 if it is going to go in at all.

The problem with all of this is that it doesn’t have to go to a public vote. There is no call for a referendum, and legally, no requirement for public input beyond Tuesday’s meeting. The town council can decide on the issue one way or the other; whether or not that will happen is still up in the air.