Victory, defeat, and charged emotions underscored the Irving City Council meeting on casino gaming on March 20.

Nearly all of the 179 citizens who signed up to speak during the public comment period were supportive of Las Vegas Sands’s request to withdraw the rezoning for gaming action item just a few hours before the meeting started at 7 PM.

Some wanted to see the action taken further. Karen Bell said she wanted the City Council to make gambling a prohibited item so it would be more difficult for the council to revisit. “If gambling went on to pass on the state level, then we would have to worry about here in Irving [again],” she warned.

Gregory Pimentel concurred, asking the City Council to go beyond simply not approving gambling but adopt an ordinance forbidding it citywide.

A representative from the University of Dallas transmitted a message from the university president that he was “grateful for the removal of gaming from the rezoning.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE DALLAS EXPRESS APP

 

At times, tempers flared. Periodically, the audience clapped or chattered after someone made a particularly rousing point.

The other councilmen tolerated this but prompted condemnation from Mayor Rick Stopfer. It was unclear who the mayor was miffed with, but after one moment of audience engagement, the mayor directed heated words at an unclear religious organization. “[That] shows respect of a Catholic organization,” Stopfer said, explaining that he went to a Catholic school for 8 years and stated in Catholic school, many of the audience members would have “broken knuckles.”

The audience booed him.

After a break, the mayor said his outrage was a response to a man who raised his voice to say something unintelligible. Upon further investigation, Stopfer says he realized the man was shouting so his wife could be heard as she approached the podium.

This clash was one of several similar exchanges throughout the evening. One of the earliest came in the first few moments of the public comment period when a 13-year-old girl named Emma Wright spoke against the casinos and received widespread applause from the audience.

Stopfer responded, “If this is the way it’s going to be, we’ll shut it down.”

Susan Hansen said, “The Sands decided not to move not because they did not have the support but because they did not have the votes.” Like many other speakers, she appeared to imply that they thought this matter could come back in the future.

Hansen also said she thought it should be recorded that “not one person” had spoken in favor of casinos. This was not the first time the public rebuke had been unanimous; DX reported during the first Planning & Zoning Commission meeting that scores of attending speakers had united in their rejection of a casino.

Representatives from Sands did not speak in support of the casino project during the March 20 meeting, although they were in attendance for at least some period early on. The Dallas Express observed Sands’ Senior Vice President Andrew Abboud and other pro-casino operatives conferring with Stopfer in a hallway just before the meeting.

At least a dozen speakers singled out and praised City Councilman Luis Canosa (D-4) for opposing the vote from the first moment the public became aware of the potential of its scheduling in late February. Canosa was the only councilman to vote against advancing the measure, and his colleagues attacked him for it at the time. The 25-year-old, who is only one year into his first term, was one of the only councilmen to attend and stay for the entirety of every public hearing on the matter.

With Stopfer looking on and several suspected burgeoning mayoral candidates present, one woman encouraged Canosa to run against the mayor and to seek the governor’s office one day.

Canosa brought a motion to make casino gaming a prohibited item, however, it failed to receive a second and therefore did not proceed to a final vote. Later, he called out his colleague Al Zapanta, who had held up two packets, one in opposition and one in support of the casino, purportedly showing that the documents were equally thick and indicative of the level of public support for each point of view. Zapanta stated there was public support for the casino, albeit it was allegedly concentrated in certain sections of District 6.

Canosa countered that most of the pro-casino packets were stuffed with autogenerated letters, different formatting, and a lawsuit that gave a false impression of support for the project.

At the end of the meeting, the council passed (6-3) two items that would allow “High intensity – Mixed Use” development on the property owned by the Sands’ affiliated corporations.

At 2 AM, the meeting gaveled out.