BIDDEFORD – Voters in seven southern Maine municipalities have resoundingly said they don’t want casinos in their towns, but Biddeford officials are giving the idea serious consideration.

Mayor Donna Dion, Police Chief Roger Beaupre and City Manager Bruce Benway led a delegation to Connecticut on Friday to see how two Indian casinos there have affected the surrounding communities.

Dion said Biddeford did not incur any costs during the trip to the Mohegan Sun Casino and the Foxwoods Casino Resort. The trip involved a three-car caravan arranged by Tom Tureen, attorney for the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Indian tribes, which want to build a casino in Maine.

Dion said she met with Tureen during the trip, and spent the rest of the time visiting the casinos and the host and neighboring communities, and talking to tourism officials in the town of Mystic.

She said she asked everyone about life before the casinos opened in the 1990s, how life changed afterward, and any major problems or benefits. “We have a checklist now, some things that are concerns or what to avoid, or how to improve things if they’re coming here. When it’s all done, we want to know if it’s too costly to the community or the state,” she said.

The Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes have proposed building a $400 million to $600 million casino and hotel resort in southern Maine, similar to the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut.

Casino gambling is illegal in Maine, so the tribes are planning to submit a bill to the Legislature in 2003 to change the law. A state task force will study the issue this fall and issue a report to the Legislature about the social and economic impacts of a casino.

But residents across southern Maine have said they don’t want a casino in their towns. York and Berwick this spring held elections in which residents overwhelmingly favored a casino ban.

On Tuesday, voters in Eliot, Kennebunk, Kittery, North Berwick, Ogunquit, Wells and Wiscasset also rejected the idea of a casino.

But a handful of towns have expressed interest in having a casino. Those include Biddeford and Sanford, which has scheduled its own referendum in November.

Councilor James Grattelo said he thinks other York County towns acted too quickly by holding referendums so soon. “I think that the towns that have taken votes have done so prematurely, emotionally, and have not received any or all of the facts necessary to make an educated decision,” Gratello said. “They’ve reacted strictly on emotion, and I’m pleased that the city of Biddeford is not going to do that.”

The interest that communities like Biddeford continue to show in a casino is one reason the political action committee Casinos No! is sticking around. The group has hired a public relations firm to help bring its message to residents and candidates statewide.

“We are concerned as long as the door is open by these communities,” said James Bartlett, co-chairman of Casinos No!

State Rep. Donna Loring of the Penobscot Nation said the tribes are still committed to convincing state officials that a well-run casino would benefit both the tribes and the state.

They estimate a casino would raise $50 million annually for each tribe; $100 million per year in state gaming revenues; and up to $5 million in local taxes for the host community.