By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- With the Bassmaster Elite set to return to Waddington this summer, the village mayor approached the Town Council on Wednesday to ask for a donation to help with the tournament.

The tournament brings some of the world’s top anglers together for four days of fishing on the St. Lawrence River. This will be its fourth year in Waddington, having been there in 2013, 2015 and 2017.

“Every time we’ve had this, we’ve brought over 33,000 people into SLC in a four-day weekend. We’ve never considered it just a Waddington event,” Waddington Mayor Janet Otto-Cassada told the council. “Massena does well for itself with the hotels being booked solid … they eat in the restaurants down here, they shop down here, they stay down here.”

“Massena does make out very well when the Bass Elites are here,” Councilman Tom Miller said.

She said she is also asking the county Board of Legislators, the St. Lawrence River Redevelopment Agency and neighboring municipalities.

“Unfortunatley the RVRDA is saying they can only give $20,000 this year,” Otto-Cassada said.

She also noted that state corrections officers last year brought inmate work crews from Ogdensburg’s two prisons to erect the tents and fencing.

“What would have taken us a week, they did in a day and a half,” she said.

She said the first year came with a $210,000 price tag but now “we’ve halved that price down.”

She said there are fundraisers going on, such as an ATV raffle, and they want to charge admission to some events, but Bassmaster wants part of the day to be free and they have trouble getting attendees to pay to see music.

“We can’t even get the people locally to pay $5 for a concert on Friday or Saturday night… the statement is ‘we pay taxes up here so we should get everything for free.’ That’s true, but you pay for fairs, you pay to go to the State Fair, you pay to go to concerts,” Otto-Cassada said.

The board took no action on the request.