Bingo fee approved by Houston County

The Houston County Commission dotted the “i” in electronic charitable bingo on Monday by stiffening the rules it first enacted in February.

Commissioners passed a 17-page resolution which places a $1,000 per machine annual bingo stamp fee on every machine operating in the county. It also requires a minimum $200 million investment to go along with any bingo project in the county. Further, any bingo hall must be directly tied to an economic development project that would bring considerable jobs to the area.

“This was our intent from the beginning,” Culver said of the new rules.

Because this is new territory for the commission, Culver said officials went to counties with bingo to see what worked and what didn’t. Officials looked at both Etowah and Walker counties.

“We didn’t want to allow broad, small-scale bingo in the county so we wanted to make our regulations specific,” he said. “Only those projects with a significant economic impact on our community are to be considered.”

Culver said other applicants have inquired about getting bingo permits.

Sheriff Andy Hughes said a couple of groups have asked about getting bingo permits, but none fit the already existing county rules.

“The people who came and talked to me, one group was out of Walker County,” Hughes said. “I gave them the copy of the rules and I never heard anything out of it.”

The annual stamp would bring in $1.5 million a year for the Country Crossing project, a proposed country music entertainment center, to be located south of Dothan. In addition, Enterprise developer Ronnie Gilley has pledged a minimum of $2 million per year in bingo proceeds to area charities.

The development is temporarily on hold because of a Phase II archeological assessment by the Alabama Historical Commission due to the finding of Indian artifacts on the site.