September 16, 2010 in City

Clark: Let’s commission a monument to runaway spending

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How about that Spokane County Raceway, huh?

Ho, hum. Another day. Another $850,000 blown out the ol’ exhaust pipe.

Just put it on our tab, commissioners. Just put it on our tab.

It’s always something, isn’t it?

This time we suckers – oops, I mean we taxpayers – get to settle a couple of lawsuits instigated by the first bozo the County Commission hired to mishandle their track.

Bucky Austin.

What an oil stain.

The Buckster, as you may recall, apparently stiffed a bunch of contractors on some of the unapproved work he ordered done out at the raceway.

So the commissioners have decided to make like Santa Claus and settle the suits. But don’t you worry. They say they intend to eventually squeeze the money out of Bucky.

Sure they will.

And I’m opening for Liza Minnelli.

It could take years to untangle that legal spider web, presuming it actually happens.

By then the two Republican lug nuts responsible for buying the $4.3 million boondoggle in 2008 will be as long gone as a couple of bank robbers speeding away in a supercharged getaway car.

And I think that’s unfair.

Every time we turn around the raceway park winds up costing us more and more money. Meanwhile, the new track operator is only guaranteeing less than $74 grand in annual income.

Let’s see. The way I figure it, we should be rolling in dough by …

Oh, about Stardate 2545.

So is it wrong to want to give Todd Mielke and Mark Richard the credit they deserve?

Not on your checkered flag.

Some of the Kool-Aid- drinking true believers accuse me of being anti-motorsports, but that’s not the case at all.

I’m not anti-motorsports. In fact, there’s nothing I love more than the thrill that comes every time I attempt to merge my ’67 Vista Cruiser onto the Maple Street Bridge during rush hour.

I just don’t think Spokane County taxpayers should have ever GOTTEN INTO THE RACING BUSINESS.

But what’s done is done. I’d like to take a different approach today. I want to stop complaining about Spokane Raceway Park and instead ask all of you out there to help me realize a dream.

And that is to commission a commissioner monument. I’m talking about something to recognize Mielke and Richard for generations and generations to come.

Hey, I’m just the idea man here. I’m not an artist.

That’s why I’d like to hear from some of you out there on what sort of monument it would be.

Off the top of my head I’m thinking a statue would be nice.

We could erect it at the entrance to the raceway park.

I can see it now: Life-size figures of Mielke and Richard, looking statesmanlike while clutching a stuffed bag of taxpayer cash with some stray $100 bills poking out the top.

Again, I’m just brainstorming.

So contact me via the information below.

In the end it doesn’t really matter what the Mielke/Richard Raceway Monument looks like, just as long as it’s chiseled out of marble or granite.

That’s because I can’t think of two more monumental chiselers.

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by e-mail at dougc@spokesman.com.

Five comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  misjustice on September 16 at 8:30 a.m.

  Thanks, Doug, I needed a laugh.

  Mr. Natural has penned a poem about the raceway, I hope that he won’t mind my posting it. Perhaps it could be a part of the monument? The poem follows…

  The Mielke memorial races,
  the dragsters and funny’s were there,
  with mopar, and nitro, and faces,
  presenting a real class affair.
  There’s mullet-head meth-monkey morons
  T-shirts, cigs and beer everywhere,
  and ladies with tank tops and thongy’s
  The smell of burned rubber in air

  The big boys all drove nitro methane,
  and numerous door slammer stock,
  An Alcohol rail had flipped on its tail,
  And the cleanup took nearly a month.
  Now you ask what the cost of such folly
  And who paid the tab for this show
  And what of the past of this greasy old track
  And what lies beneath and below.

  Tis a modern political miracle
  In the eyes of the entrepreneurs
  Or a boondoggle of taxpayer money
  and a raid on the public coffers
  Oh the Mielke memorial races
  A quite popular feast to a few
  The waste it embraces the contaminant traces
  Is paid for from me and from you

• 

  johno on September 16 at 9:11 a.m.

  And coming in April the voters will be asked to approve $250 million for a new jail. But we already have a jail at Gieger? We’ve been given notice by the Airport Board to vacate because the lease is up. But the Airport Board is appointed by the County. Why doesn’t the county tell the airport board to renew the lease?

• 

  MrNatural on September 16 at 10:41 a.m.

  Hey!…Good Morning mj…

  I’m flattered…thanks for posting the poem…

  I’d suggest the memorial should be an Edsel modified as a dragster with a very large screw through the center…or maybe something simpler like a couple of lug nuts…

• 

  misjustice on September 16 at 10:54 a.m.

  A couple of lug nuts? Richard and Mielke? In bronze? Lol! ; )

• 

  horse_feathers on September 16 at 11:02 a.m.

  How about a statue of both commissioners putting tax payers money down the throat of the goat at Riverfront Park ?