Weighing in

Last week, Spokane County commissioners fired the company they hired to operate the county’s Raceway Park, after the company built up around $1.2 million in unpaid debts that may now have to come from the county’s insurance.

Todd Mielke, Mark Richards and Bonnie Mager voted unanimously to fire Austin Motorsports Management and owner Bucky Austin. Mielke and Richards voted a year ago to purchase the racetrack near Airway Heights.

The story provoked robust debate at spokesman.com. Here’s an edited excerpt:

Rifleman_Dodd: How about terminating the two commissioners that got us in this mess?

Maynard Ross Jr.: Commissioner Bonnie Mager was right to be the only one of the three to vote ‘NO’ on acquiring the race track. I think the sensible thing to do is to sell the property to a business developer. Maybe a Las Vegas casino operator would like to buy it and give Northern Quest a little more competition.

PlanB: Settle down. This hasn’t been a drain on the county and they are just fixing something that broke because someone didn’t keep up their end of the deal. They should be commended for taking action so quickly.

William Mahaney: The county commissioners (well, two of them) purchased this property with taxpayer dollars. The county commissioners selected the “manager” of the raceway, who gobbled up, I would guess, MORE taxpayers’ dollars. The county commissioners now will have to “bail out” the debts the Raceway has incurred…with taxpayer dollars. Those of us who pay taxes to the county have been screwed from the start.

Zelda Krup: Given the potential liability for the county when this contract was awarded, the county should have been watching every step of the way. Because Austin “failed to pay the contractors, failed to secure a performance bond before he contracted for the work, and didn’t go through the competitive bidding process required for public projects,” I’d say the county did an unacceptable job of contract management. I have my doubts they’re going to get better at it.

wurman: Looks very much as if the taxpayers of the Spokane area are and have been hung out to dry for a lot of cash on gravel pits, race tracks, parks, preserves, reserves, and generally stupid concepts that have ziff, nada, zilch to do with running local government.

Why would they want to pave streets, repair bridges and manage a competent police department, etc., when they can play a very expensive form of Monopoly with somebody else’s real money?