Bangor voters said yes Tuesday to a plan to install slot machines at the Bangor Raceway, which also includes a $30 million makeover of Bass Park. Capital Seven, a Nevada company, plans to rebuild the harness racing track and construct a hotel and conference center. The installation of slot machines at the horse track turns the facility into a racino. The race, however, has just begun.

The biggest challenge now facing the project is a statewide referendum vote when, fair or not, the Bangor project will be lumped in with plans to build a casino in southern Maine, a proposal that will also be on the November ballot. State voters – specifically, groups opposed to casinos in any form – are likely to be more circumspect about facilities that will not have as direct a benefit for them. The challenge for Capital Seven will be to show racino’s successes elsewhere.

Racino advocates are smart to highlight the economic development potential of the project for a region that is sorely lacking in good employment news. A University of Maine study projected the racino would provide more than 300 jobs and add $75 million to the local economy. Twenty-five percent of slot revenues would go to the state for social service, education and agricultural programs. The city of Bangor would get at least $1 million a year plus taxes and rent payments. In addition, Bangor officials hope the project and its revenues will help the redevelopment of the city’s waterfront. The challenge for supporters is to make voters statewide care about these numbers.

.

On the evening of the successful jobs-bond vote, Gov. John Baldacci pledged “immediate results” from the $60 million investment, which passed easily Tuesday. The results will be both immediate and long term, with investments in promising parts of Maine’s economy and in education. But the $60 million will not appear in a state of Maine bank account tomorrow.

Just before the vote an unlikely expectation was raised by some lawmakers, who worried that not all the money Maine has been approved to borrow to date had been spent. State Treasurer Dale McCormick explained that a large portion of the $300 million in outstanding highway and general obligation bonds would be issued this week. But equally important is that bonds are not designed to be offered all at once, and the state would have difficult questions to answer if they had been issued that way.

To take just two examples, the Land for Maine’s Future bonds, approved by voters in 1987 and ’99, are supposed to last for many years and be sold as important parcels of land become available for sale or easement, and the school revolving loan program, which doesn’t issue bonds until schools are to be built. Highway construction, which can take several years, has a similar delay. To issue all the bonds as soon as the spending is approved would be wasteful and costly.

So good for voters who supported this important measure. But they shouldn’t be surprised if, for instance, the construction resulting from the bonds is paid as the work is done and not upfront, which might have “immediate results” of a sort the state hadn’t anticipated.