With John Linn and Jim Mosby running for Lompoc City Council again we are faced with their plans to promote and impose the expensive motorsports speed racetrack business on Lompoc at the expense of all of us taxpayers. If you voters give them the votes, they, with their sidekicks City Councilmembers Dirk Starbuck and Victor Vega, will tie up Lompoc financially for a long time at the expense of our safety centers. This group has made it clear that they will promote the motorsports speed racetrack in the middle of Lompoc as their private business. And they will push it through the city at the expense of other important city projects.
These sponsors tell us that it will stop street racing, but the police have said that there have been no problems with street racing reported in the past two years. It’s just more nonsense from Linn and Mosby. There won’t be much for kids to do either, except to sit in the stands and watch tractor pulling, etc. Kids already have a bike park on A Street and a motorbike park at River Bend Park.
Linn got this scheme started when he was mayor three years ago and committed the city to develop a private business. The state was to provide funds but at least half will be spent on planning and little will be left for the racetrack construction.
The proposed site is at the north end of
O Street behind the Walmart store and about 800 feet from private housing along Central Street. The high-speed racetracks would be on rented city property along the airport runway where it would interfere with the present very successful skydive business there and airport functions in general. It is not an airport function. It will depress property values, be noisy and dirty, and increase our already heavy traffic around Walmart. The proposed track entrance would be on V Street.
The project is very nebulous financially and no business plan has been developed or submitted by the motorsports racetrack committee to show that it will be viable in the future. The racetrack would have to pay an FAA required market value rent to the city each year, estimated to be around $50,000 if built on this airport property. In addition the racetrack would need liability insurance thought to be hard to get for this kind of venture. Most city residents are not aware of this giant liability on them for the benefit of a small self-serving group supported by a majority of the present councilmembers. Some aspects of the project are still verbal.
The motorsports racetrack serves only a small group of people from out of town. Mayor Bob Lingl and Councilman DeWayne Holmdahl do not support using city funds to promote a private business like the racetrack. Neither does City Council candidate Jenelle Osborne. They all believe it’s in the wrong place.
Mr. Mosby, who was appointed by Councilmembers Starbuck and Vega, is now having “transparency meetings” to get public attention for his election. In the meantime Mr. Mosby is opposing any efforts for a new fire station. He has a poor sense of city priorities. Ex-mayor Linn has a terrible reputation with the city employees as well as city voters.
Both of these people spew clouds of factoid figures to look like experts, but they are not. They reject the proposals by professional city employees for their own. The city employees have endorsed re-election of Lingl and Holmdahl and urge voters to elect Jenelle Osborne to replace Mosby. Osborne is a longtime business person in Lompoc and past chair of the Lompoc Economic Development Committee.
The city does not need a racetrack in the middle of town. We need to get the town back on the right track by electing Lingl, Holmdahl, and Osborne in November and stop the runaway racetrack promoted by Linn and Mosby.
Justin M. Ruhge lives in Lompoc. Send comments to scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 6-13, 2016.