Seniors yell 'Bingo!' as paperwork clears Permits for bingo, 50/50 were hand-delivered to seniors July 20 BY TOM CAIAZZA Staff Writer Judy Gillingham of the Edison Township Health and Senior Services Department said it best: "Bingo is back and we're thrilled." After nearly four months without the ubiquitous Senior Club pastime, the members of the various senior citizen clubs in Edison have their papers in hand and their bingo cards marked. The five senior groups in the township use the proceeds from 50/50 raffles and $2 bingo games to fund their various philanthropic and group activities. In March they were told by the township that they had been operating illegal games of chance, and both groups scrambled to have paperwork filled out and filed with the state in order to minimize the amount of fundraising money the seniors might lose. Gillingham, whose job it was to assist the seniors with their paperwork, said that without the permits from the state, the senior groups ran the risk of having to pay several thousands of dollars in fines. She said it would be devastating to the clubs, which do not use municipal money to operate. "Why take that chance?" Gillingham said of not having the paperwork filed. "Why hurt the treasury for the next three years?" Maria Afonso, president of the Bonhamtown Seniors, had said in the past that she was worried that the long break in fundraising for the year was going to result in a lack of money for the second half of the year's events. Gillingham said that there are worse things than being behind in the fundraising. "A $7,500 fee was going to hurt them a lot more," Gillingham said. The Bonhamtown Seniors were the first to get their papers when a representative from the state Legalized Games of Chance Control Commission personally handed over the permits on July 19 to a surprised group of seniors at the Senior Center. Afonso has her own theory as to why their requests were finally processed and hand-delivered. "I think the pressure of everybody writing letters to the higher authorities and the newspapers enabled us to get this done quicker," Afonso said. The seniors were required to submit financial records of how much money they were taking in and paying out as a gambling institution. Gillingham said that the state has no idea that these groups were only making small amounts of money. The seniors, she explained, had to prove what they were taking in. In some cases, the books were not perfect, and she attributes some of the delay to that. The township still has to issue permits of its own, but Gillingham said that the township was allowing them to conduct their games before they file those papers, knowing they are good for them. While the Bonhamtown Seniors did not see a drop-off in their membership - they were the only ones who played money-free bingo every Friday - Gillingham said that overall there was a drop off in attendance. But now things are getting better, she said. "We're up and running, we're back in business," Gillingham said. Afonso thinks that at least the Bonhamtown Seniors can make up the shortfall they experienced while they could not run their 50/50 raffles. "In two months we'll be able to make it up," Afonso said.