Gov’t made 'significant' offer to family owning land @ Ellis Thomas Downs- Premier
The popular horse races came to a halt at the venue in September 2022 after the government was issued a directive to discontinue utilising the portion of lands owned by the Thomas family.
While there were speculations at the time that government may have owed money on the lease, this had been debunked by Dr Wheatley.
During a panel discussion titled ‘Let’s Chew on the Issue’ live-streamed on the Virgin Islands Party (VIP) Facebook page on April 6, 2023, Dr Wheatley responded to a question that was sent in by a member of the public with regards to when the issue will be sorted out.
The Premier reminded that the Dr D. Orlando Smith administration had signed a lease contract with the Thomas’ family for the track, which he noted was a very difficult one since the government was basically receiving the ‘short end of the stick’.
Issues arose under NDP in 2017
He noted that every 5 years, the lease comes up for rent review, however, issues had arisen in 2017.
“Since 2017, I think the past administration kind of told them, [the family] well they can’t deal with it because of the storms. Even though, I mean, it’s supposed to be paid in February of the year and the storms were in September, but be that as it may there’s supposed to be rent reviews every 5 years. So, they missed that rent review in 2017. I think the family was a bit disgruntled by that, but then we come around to 2022 and do negotiations and we discovered some anomalies with the lease, and so based on those anomalies we’ve been trying to negotiate with the family,” Dr Wheatley noted.
The premier went on to state that the family has requested increased rent and the government is trying to agree to a comfortable figure since it does not want to abuse the taxpayers' coffers.
‘Significant increase’ offered to Thomas family- Premier
“So that’s where we left it at. We put forward something…it was certainly an increase, you could say a significant increase, but it's to see whether the family would accept the offer that we have made. Nothing has really happened since we put forward that offer. We’re waiting on the family to come back to us and let us know whether the offer was acceptable to them or not,” he added.
The Premier said government has sought to be responsible by negotiating a comfortable lease since the family had expressed that they were unhappy with what they were initially receiving.
“They wanted it increased and we of course put forward an increased figure to the family…So right now that is definitely the hold-up. The Deputy Premier can confirm that, because he was in on those negotiations and we made a very passionate plea to resolve the matter and we’re just waiting on the family to get back to us. And as soon as the family agrees we can move forward and have horse- racing again,” he noted.
$1.5M put into horseracing track each year- Premier
Dr Wheatley also noted that government has appealed for a lease which would allow for sub-leasing so as to invite a third party other than government which is interested in investing in the track and introducing activities such as simulcasting, parimutuel which will make it more sustainable, as well as to do some proper investments on the infrastructure.
“People may not even know how much money we paid towards the track…right now we pay probably about a million dollars just to one family…we are putting upwards of probably 1.5 million dollars into the track every year…this year we put that kind of money in it and we didn’t get any use out of it, which is really a shame,” Dr Wheatley stressed.
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19 Responses to “Gov’t made 'significant' offer to family owning land @ Ellis Thomas Downs- Premier”
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Lesmo and the NDP FOOL THIS COUNTRY set a vampias
Government of if it is going to stay in horse racing business needs to look at other options. Undoubtedly, the Thomas family is making the decision that is in their family best interest. They are holding on to the land and receiving receiving revenue. Land ownership is a cultural and heritage identity in the BVI. Moreover, horse racing needs some certainty. Typically, horse racing is a private sector operations. But in a small locale like the BVI with an approx 30,000 population private sector interest at this juncture may be low. So if government must get fully engaged in horse racing, it may need to enter into a long-term lease with the Thomas or other families and then outsourced the operations to a private sector entity or look at other locale, ie, Anegada(??), etc. In any event, government must avoid being held over the barrel uncertainty every five years.
Ridiculous.