Hospital Gets Big Score

The Ontario Lottery Commission handed out a nice check to Sault Ste. Marie for hosting OLG Casino Sault Ste. Marie. The municipality will be using its fourth quarter share of the slots revenue for medical uses.

The OLG Casino Sault Ste. Marie has been open since May 19th, 1999, and has brought in more than 8.2 million visitors. The city that it is hosted in gets a portion of the proceeds from the slots to use as they wish, and the OLG disburses the remainder of it.

The check that they received this time was for $352,418 and the municipality is using it for hospital and physician recruitment. The city has gotten more than $14.3 million in non-tax gaming revenue since the casino opened. Roughly $1 million a year goes to funding the new hospital, from the slots revenue.

This hospital is a thirteen year commitment from the municipality so that the community will have top notch health care. OLG issued more than $17.9 million to other communities that also host OLG casinos and slots. They have given away more than $541.3 million so far.

They make their payments on a quarterly basis, and each municipality gets 5% of the slots revenue for the first 450 slots, and then 2% for any remaining slots. They estimate that they will be paying out $39 million this year alone.




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