Gural says action taken with track in 'dire financial shape'

Officials at Vernon Downs have announced—including a memorandum from track owner Jeffrey Gural that can be read below—that it will close its doors for racing in 2007 following this weekend, an action that comes as a result of legislation that would have lowered the tax rate on the video gaming machines being defeated. The track will race Friday and Saturday as planned but it has canceled the remaining four days of racing scheduled for November, and it may also close the barn area.

Here is the memorandum dated Oct. 23 written by Gural and sent to the Vernon Downs horsemen that was posted on the racetrack website:

"I regret to inform you that it now appears that the legislation we desperately need to survive at Vernon and Tioga is not going to be passed in the Assembly. Joe Faraldo and horsemen throughout the state, including members of your horsemen’s association have massively lobbied against the bill and appear to have succeeded in killing it. Your horsemen’s association has even stooped so low as to call RoAnn Destito, our local Assemblywoman to complain that I have announced that I am only going to race 50 days next year when nothing could be further from the truth and I have always intended to honor my commitment to race 90 days. In addition, as promised, last week I personally loaned the purse account $400,000 to as to insure that we have enough money to pay the purses already earned and purses to be earned for the remainder of the meet.

"In any case, at this point we are in dire financial shape and in order to conserve our cash we have elected to stop racing after this coming weekend. We will be making a formal request to Racing and Wagering later today. In addition, if no progress is made in the next two weeks I would anticipate that we will be forced to close the barn area as well in order to save cash. While I recognize that it is important to you, the horsemen, to have the legislation include guaranteed percentages I too agree and am not opposed to same, even though the other tracks seem to be opposed.

"Once again, by not working together we are now forced to eliminate the last two weeks of the racing season. Hopefully, we will get this worked out but considering how vigorously opposition from the horsemen is I am not optimistic."

Signed, Jeffrey Gural

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