PRESTONSBURG – Since a bingo hall operation moved into the Cliffside area earlier this year, residents of Hibiscus Court, just outside Prestonsburg city limits and adjacent to the new hall, say they have had one problem after another in their once quiet neighborhood since the opening.

Margie Maynard, one resident who spoke on behalf of the 20 or so people who live along Hibiscus Road, said they’ve taken several steps to resolve their complaints, but have had little progress.

Those issues range from noise from the nearby bingo hall to visitors to the establishment using their residential street as an entrance and exit to the hall. This traffic, say residents, has resulted in damages to both the street itself and to yards along the street.

“They play every night, seven days a week, and sometimes twice on Saturday,” said Maynard. “There are 200 cars or more coming up and down this little, one-lane road every day and they’re making it a two-lane road by using some people’s yards.”

Maynard says she and the other residents deal nightly with both the people who gather outside the bingo hall to talk and also to the activities going on inside the hall.

“We can hear the bingo being called out,” she said.

At other times, the traffic has placed some of the children who play along the street in danger, Maynard said, pointing to one incident in which a skateboarding young boy was pulled from the path of a speeding vehicle on its way to the bingo hall.

James Pennington opened the new bingo hall following a vote by the Prestonsburg City Council to ban smoking in public buildings within city limits, including the bingo hall once located along Court Street.

Maynard said she and the others have written to Pennington and also contacted county officials about the problem. The group had intended to visit the Floyd County Fiscal Court meeting today, but the meeting was canceled.

Currently, Maynard and the other residents say its a “full-time job” keeping the street clean of litter and debris from garbage thrown from car windows, while adding that the bingo hall itself has become an eyesore of litter.

“The dumpster over there is always filled over to spilling and then there’s that much more garbage sitting beside the dumpster,” she said.

Maynard she and her neighbors plan to continue writing letters of complaint and spend the time between now and the next scheduled county meeting formalizing their complaints in hopes of finding some relief to the problems.