By Jeffrey Mize

LA CENTER - The closest city to the proposed Cowlitz casino cranked up its opposition Wednesday by vowing to "pursue all legal means available" unless steps are taken to offset the project's effects.

By a 5-0 vote, the city council adopted a resolution that lists 10 deficiencies La Center sees in the project's preliminary final environmental impact statement, which was circulated to numerous local governments in late March.

Those concerns include the effect the project would have on La Center's gambling revenues, roads and schools.

The resolution says that until all the alleged deficiencies are addressed, the city remains opposed to the casino.

Council members Bob Smith and Dale Smith will hand-deliver the resolution to federal officials in Washington, D.C., at some undetermined date.

Dale Smith said the pair hope to meet with Jim Cason, the Interior Department's associate deputy secretary, and Carl Artman, assistant Interior secretary for Indian affairs.

"We're checking into their schedules," he said. "With the summer season coming on, it's going to be fairly hard."

The council also voted 5-0 to authorize the three elected officials who serve on La Center's tribal affairs committee - Mayor Jim Irish, Councilman Bill Birdwell and Councilman Dale Smith - to meet with the Cowlitz Indian Tribe.

Dale Smith said the three officials, along with City Attorney Dan Kearns, will discuss what mitigation measures could be taken to offset the project's effects.

"I think there has been a lot of misunderstanding of intent and what we want to do," he said, adding that the anti-casino resolution adopted Wednesday "doesn't mean we don't want to talk."

Councilman Troy Van Dinter, however, downplayed any prospects for negotiations between the city and the tribe.

"The meeting is to explain our position to the tribe," he said. "We didn't say this was going to kick off negotiations."

The council has repeatedly dodged negotiations with the tribe, which proposes to build a $510 million casino complex along Interstate 5 two miles west of La Center.

In February 2006, Cowlitz Chairman John Barnett handed Mayor Irish a proposed draft agreement, including an offer to pay the city up to $3 million annually for 10 years to offset projected tax losses from the city's four nontribal cardrooms.

The council, however, never gave the tribe a yes-or-no answer. Nor did the city submit a counteroffer.

"We know more now than we did then," Dale Smith said. "The smoke has cleared from this issue pretty well."

Just last month, Councilman Bob Smith slammed -Kearns and other city officials for crafting sewer agreements with the tribe. Those draft agreements include provisions for the Cowlitz to pay $6 million to extend sewer lines west to the freeway and to contribute another $11 million to cover half the bill to expand and upgrade La Center's sewage treatment.

Earlier Wednesday, Irish and Jeff Sarvis, La Center's public works director, participated in a two-hour meeting with Clark County commissioners on sewer issues in north county and whether La Center and Ridgefield will have the necessary sewer capacity to serve land that could be folded into the cities' urban growth areas.

The Cowlitz have given La Center roughly until the end of June to provide a yes-or-no answer on whether the city and tribe will become sewer partners.

If not, tribal representatives say, they will proceed with their own sewage treatment plant on the southeast corner of the 152-acre casino site.

Dale Smith said there is no chance the council will simply let the late-June deadline pass without discussion.

Steve Horenstein, an attorney for the development partnership between Cowlitz Tribe member David Barnett and the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut, said the resolution doesn't say anything different from what the city has stated previously.

"This is a nonevent to the tribe," he said. "It doesn't add anything to the dialogue, and I haven't heard from the tribe that it changes our position on anything."