In the middle of the parking lot at the Everett Mall, facing the line of carts where a chubby man with slicked-back hair cuts the numbers for a half-dozen patrons, there’s a stack of candy bars and potato chips.

On the lid of the cart, an invitation to a casino.

In the city of Everett, where the unemployment rate has surpassed 10 percent and more than one in five residents live in poverty, choi loto188 the chance of striking it rich is almost as good as the chances of getting a job at Safeway.

The Everett Mall has not been particularly kind to the city, having taken out an option to buy the mall for $19.5 million, with an asking price of $30 million. But it has not done the mall’s investors any favors.

The city is owed $10 million in back taxes, which could force it to sell off city assets or seek bankruptcy protection.

The cash-strapped city, already struggling to pay off a $39 million debt to the Everett Public Library, has faced a $400,000 annual shortfall in funding for more than a decade.

But in the city’s latest budget, its financial woes are exacerbated by a $16.5 million annual payout to shareholders of the city’s largest employer, the Safeway supermarket chain.

Despite the circumstances, the Everett Mall and the company’s plans for a $400 million casino project have benefited the city in unexpected ways.

A nonprofit, the local branch of the National Association of Gambling Communicators, has purchased $600,000 worth of lottery tickets from the Everett Mall’s ticket counter and is distributing the prizes.

The mall’s lottery partnership with the group has been an effective marketing strategy that has resulted in unprecedented success.

According to Everett city officials, choi loto188 the mall has sold more than $5 million in lottery tickets to the group’s approximately 100 members and its fund-raisers. The proceeds of the tickets are funneled into the Everett Mall’s charity, the Everett Foundation, which has raised more than $1 million for Everett charities.

The mall’s lottery partnership has been a boon to the local economy, city officials said.

 “It’s a great benefit to us,” said Thomas Porter, the city’s development services director.

And to the mall, which has managed to sell more than $25 million in tickets in the last two years, the relationship with the lottery group has been a money-maker.

The partnership, which began in the fall of 2006, was initially meant to boost sales at the mall’s food court.

But within the first year of the lottery partnership, the mall began selling the tickets in its ticket counter, said Marc Crockett, the mall’s director of marketing.