The Aurora City Council’s Finance Committee continues to discuss the possibility of increasing fees for video gambling machines.

But for some, the question seems to be, why?

“Inflation?” said Ald. Sherman Jenkins, at large, a Finance Committee member. “It’s not like it’s killing us.”

The Finance Committee recently discussed the fees, and any possible increase, but members agreed to hold the issue at the committee for further discussion.

Jenkins said city officials asked for feedback from club owners and not-for-profit clubs and organizations, but officials “haven’t gotten as much as we would like.”

Joe Lusk, of the Luxemburger Club on High Street on the East Side, gave some feedback at the meeting, but it was similar to what he has pointed out in the past.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, and inflation, any increase in gaming fees at this time would hurt places like the Luxies Club greatly. The club is a not-for-profit organization, which uses a lot of the money it raises to donate to social service agencies throughout the city.

He suggested in the past the city adopt lower fees for nonprofits than for regular businesses.

At one point, officials said they would look at that idea.

But as it stands now, there is one proposal to increase the annual license for each location from $1,000 to $1,100, and the monthly operation fee from $125 a machine to $175 a machine.

The city’s intention is to have the terminal operators – which in the city’s ordinance means those supplying the machines – to assume the additional cost, not the establishment, meaning the club, organization or business where the machine is located.

Under the city’s figuring, the establishment cost of locating five machines fox example would stay the same – at $1,500 a year. But the cost for the terminal operators would increase from $7,000 a year to $10,100 a year.

The new fees would not go into effect until next year, in October 2023, under the city proposal.

The situation has been complicated by a change in state law, which attempted to make the establishments and terminal operators share in the cost of the fees, rather than do what Aurora does, which is to charge the terminal operators more.

But that state law, recently adopted, still is being evaluated by the Illinois Gaming Commission, which has not issued any guidelines on how it should be implemented.

One of the reasons the city began the discussion about its fees was related to that new state law, but city officials backed off after hearing the Gaming Commission is not ready yet to implement it.

But aldermen sent the question of whether or not to actually raise the fees back to the Finance Committee, which continues to discuss it.

City officials have pointed out that gaming fees have not been changed since 2009, and that the city’s costs of administering video gambling machines might have gone up.

Ald. Carl Franco, 5th Ward, Finance Committee chairman, has said that he does not want gambling costs to be balanced “on the taxpayers’ backs.”

“If (the costs) are not going up, then I don’t care about it,” he said. “But if we, the city, are paying more, I don’t think taxpayers should be subsidizing gambling.”

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