Raymond Hunter: Casino means self-sufficiency for Jamul Band

The Jamul Indian Village has been working to develop a gaming facility on our Federal Tribal Trust land since entering into a Tribal-State Compact with the state of California in 1999. Our compact allows gaming of limited size and scope, with comprehensive regulatory oversight involving state, federal, and tribal participation. Our compact has been formally approved by the U.S. Department of Interior.

These efforts, which culminated with construction that began last month, have not been without controversy. Residents of Jamul have raised concerns over the structure’s height, design, and most pointedly: safety on State Route (SR) 94, where our tribal land is located. We have listened to these concerns and addressed them.

As a result, we have developed a new and improved vision of our gaming project, one that fully takes into account the concerns of our neighbors and the county of San Diego. The redesigned project will create thousands of jobs for our neighbors, allows the tribe to become self-sufficient, and enable us to share gaming revenue with local governments and charities. Fundamentally, this project will enable our tribe to be a greater asset to our community through the generation of revenue-sharing dollars for public safety, education, traffic mitigation and critical government services. We believe this can be achieved while respecting the environment and our neighbors’ concerns.