Meeting in special session last Monday (Nov. 28) night the Mineola City Council passed its first ever ordinance establishing rules and regulations concerning placement and operation of gaming rooms and amusement redemption machines within the incorporated city limits of Mineola.

It took some two hours of reading the proposed ordinance, hearing comments and questions from six different individuals in some way connected with what could be considered game rooms, discussion among council members about the ordinance and finally the unanimous approval of the ordinance with a couple of amendments. All members of the council, except Sue Jones who was out of town, were present.

The new ordinance will be effective as soon as the legal publication of the ordinance appears in the newspaper.

It seemed that the biggest points of contention from operators of said game rooms came on the limiting of operating hours, required game room signs, and whether charitable origination sweepstakes machines would be covered by the ordinance.

When all the discussion was over the council approved the proposed ordinance with a couple of amendments.

The first of these amendments expanded the proposed hours of operation. The original hours were Sunday - Thursday, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. (midnight). The hours were amended to Sunday - Thursday, 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 8 a.m. to 1 a.m.

The other major change was to make certain conditions which were grandfathered in one portion of the ordinance and not grandfathered in another portion of the ordinance, all read grandfathered throughout the ordinance.

In his opening remarks on the proposed ordinance Mayor Rodney Watkins said that work on preparing the document had been a long and arduous task with City Administrator Mercy Rushing, City Attorney Blake Armstrong, and several other city officials meeting many times over several months to come up with the document to be considered.

“We obtained information from quite a few other cities, some as near as Grand Saline, to as far away as Galveston and Georgetown, to review and see what other cities were doing. We looked at the businesses that are already operating these machines in Mineola and we looked at what might become of this type of business if we did not do something to regulate it,” Watkins said.

Watkins said that there are currently eight businesses which operate gaming devices in Mineola and he listed them as Tango, Valero, J.R. Business Center, Shell Station, Mobil Station, Paradise Vapor Shop, VFW and the Mineola Country Club. He added that some were small and some were very large.

Ray King representing J.R. Business Center said that his facility had “about 70 machines” and was operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Tommy Hobson of the Mineola Country Club found out that the machines there would not even fall under the new ordinance since the country club has only four machines.

The new ordinance is lengthy and at times confusing since some items are grandfathered for those businesses already in operation, like the number of machines, while other items apply to all operators of gaming devices that fall under the ordinance.

Watkins said that in addition to the eight places operating in Mineola now that have gaming machines, there four more looking to start operations in Mineola.

Some of the new regulations new operators must comply with include background checks, location limitations and no more than 10 machines in any game room.

Attorney Hayward Rigano of Longview who represents the operators of the Valero station in Mineola told the council that they would find out that operations of “charitable sweepstakes” facilities would not fall under the ordinance.

The council heard his comments, but still included such operations in the new ordinance.