Good afternoon:

I am writing on behalf of the City of Danville. 

I would like to make the Commission aware of our desire to have the limit on the number of Historic Horse Racing (HHR) machines lifted. It is our belief that the City of Danville could host well above the current cap of 150 games. Our location on the Southern border of Virginia within an hour drive of highly populated areas in North Carolina make Danville ideally situated to attract many visitors to our community. We believe that HHR would help the local economy by bringing visitors to our City while also providing significant revenue to help revitalize live horse racing at Colonial Downs and Virginia. 

The City would use local revenue generated by this project to help fund K-12 education. A recent study by the National Resource Network indicated that there is a significant five year funding gap that needs to be addressed to maintain basic services and provide our school system with the funds they need to adequately educate a challenging population. The study showed that Danville needs to increase school funding by $4.2 million per year in order to reach the average of our peer cities funding per pupil. This equates to about a 25% total increase over current funding and would require about a 19 cent tax increase. As you might expect, an increase in taxes of this size is not realistically or politically viable. 

What additional steps would we need to make as a community to advocate for 1,200 (HHR) machines in Danville?

Thanks for your consideration. 

Sincerely,

Ken