WATERLOO -- The Boys and Girls Club of Black Hawk County is considering moving its suspended bingo operations to the National Cattle Congress grounds.

"We've been in discussions with the people responsible for running bingo at the National Cattle Congress," Boys and Girls Club interim executive director Wallace Sulentic said. "It's my hope we can work out an arrangement whereby they can run our operation. They do a magnificent job out there."

If an accommodation can be worked out with NCC, the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals would be asked to approve the arrangement, Sulentic said. He hopes to broach the idea with state officials soon.

The Boys and Girls Club bingo operation was shut down June 24 "because it was just no longer profitable," Sulentic said. It had operated in Cedarloo Center on University Avenue as Youth Foundation Bingo for several years.

The bingo operation lost $36,000 in 2005, but was making about $110,000 per year for Boys and Girls Club operations as recently as 2002, on revenues of $1.1 to $1.3 million a year. In contrast, NCC reported net income of $140,600 from bingo operations as recently as 2004 on gross receipts of $226,000, according to its Internal Revenue Service Form 990 report.

"It was hard to believe we were not making money, because the NCC was making very good money from bingo," said Sulentic, named interim Boys and Girls Club director in May.

The Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals has issued an administrative subpoena to the Boys and Girls Club of Black Hawk County for records of its bingo operations.

The department took the action following the Boys and Girls Club's announcement in May that it is facing a financial crisis which had depleted about $500,000 in assets over the past several years. A decline in the club's revenues from nonprofit bingo operations was a factor in the club's worsening financial position, according to club members and an emergency committee of community leaders working with the organization, also reviewing bingo operations.

The Boys and Girls Club and NCC bingo "would be two separate operations," Sulentic said. "What we're looking at is NCC would run three days and Boys and Girls Club would be two days," in separate buildings. Boys and Girls Club bingo would run in Electric Park Ballroom, but NCC's bingo would run in the Pavilion building, both on the NCC fairgrounds.

That may be complicated, Sulentic acknowledged, since state officials said one organization cannot operate two licenses.

He noted state officials, though, had allowed the Boys and Girls Club to operate under two licenses -- one under its name, the other under the Youth Foundation, both at Cedarloo Center, until the Youth Foundation license expired in January 2005. The dual license effectively allowed a bingo operation in the same location five days a week. State officials suggested that situation was not permitted, but continued due to a lack of enforcement capabilities.

Interim Boys and Girls Club director Sulentic also is a member of the NCC board of directors and would have to recuse himself from any negotiations between the NCC and Boys and Girls Club boards on bingo.

Meanwhile, Sulentic said the club has raised enough revenue to stave off its financial crisis and sustain operations of its youth programs this summer and beyond.

Contact Pat Kinney at (319) 291-1484 or Pat.Kinney@wcfcourier.com.