In support of the Town of Vinton, please accept these comments regarding the final draft regulations for the Historical Horse Racing terminals.

The Town of Vinton is located in Roanoke County and is a community of approximately 3 square miles  with a population of 8,100 residents.  The Town is located within the Roanoke Metropolitan Statistical Area, with a population of over 300,000.

The Vinton Town Council recently expressed enthusiastic support for the return of horse racing to the Commonwealth by unanimously passing a Resolution on September 4, 2018 to authorize the return of an Off Track Betting Facility to the Town and to support the addition of the HHR terminals.

However, the regulations as currently written fall short of allowing Vinton to realize the full positive impact by unnecessarily limiting the number of HHR terminals based on the Town's population alone. The current cap of 150 terminals will unnecessarily diminish a valuable opportunity to encourage the expansion of employment opportunities and help generate much needed revenue to provide services for Vinton residents and visitors to the community.

Please consider removing the constraint of limiting the number of terminals based on the Town's geographic boundary and population and instead, allow the number of terminals to be based on the market's full potential and determined by the Roanoke MSA's population.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Respectfully,

Jill Loope, DIrector of Economic Development