False Start

Out in Airway Heights, crews are busy winterizing the Spokane County Raceway, locking up the facility until spring. But when the thaw does finally come, no one is sure who will be there to take care of the track.

Last week, the Spokane County commissioners fired the company they hired earlier this year to run the raceway, Austin Motorsports Management, because of its inability to pay for $1.2 million in improvements at the track. Now the commissioners are scrambling to find a new operator, just as they did last year. Scrambling to see what improvements have been done and which ones are paid for. Scrambling to winterize. Scrambling, some say, as they did more than a year ago when they hurriedly bought the track.

“If we had an operator in place by the end of March, we’d be fine,” says Doug Chase, director of Spokane County Parks, Recreation and Golf. The clock is ticking, and for now, everything’s fine. “Our staff is very experienced and well-trained in winterizing facilities,” he says.

But this latest episode at the drag strip has brought the debate back to Square One: Should the county be in the racetrack business?

The question was first raised last year when the county purchased the raceway for $4.3 million, a contentious decision that had Todd Mielke and Mark Richard squaring off against their fellow commissioner, Bonnie Mager. She was in “total opposition” to purchasing the track mainly because of the unknown cost of cleaning up the pollutants below the track’s surface. But she had other reasons.

“The public sector shouldn’t be involved in what the private sector has much more latitude in running,” Mager says. “Whenever you have a public entity, you’re probably holding yourself out for some sort of litigation if the contractor who is working for you doesn’t or can’t pay.”

Which is what’s shaping up. Bucky Austin, the man behind the management company, was himself scrambling for the past two months to find funding for all the improvements he’s done to the track, but to no avail.

Currently, 11 companies have filed claims with the county totaling $1.2 million. Of those, six have filed liens worth $1.1 million.

“Spokane County and the county’s risk pool are in the process of reviewing those claims to determine if the county is liable,” says Jim Emacio, the county’s chief civil prosecutor. “That should be completed within a month or so.”

Either Austin will pay. Or the county’s insurance will.

“Most people wouldn’t pick up the phone and say, ‘I need my roof fixed. I’ll figure out how to pay for it later.’ I think to some degree he did that,” Mielke says, noting that Austin’s contract had called for $1 million in improvements a year for the first two years, but that Austin had spent $2.2 million in the first season renovating the track, including significant improvements to the almost 700-foot-long drag racing surface and a complete remodeling of the timing tower building and offices.

“He had a lifestyle that’s kind of fast and loose,” Mielke says. “I mean, he’s a racecar driver — it shouldn’t be a surprise.”

Problems began almost immediately after the season started, Mielke says. Opening day was May 1 and invoices for the work Austin commissioned started coming into his in-box. He didn’t pay them. By early July, the contractors started filing claims with the county, and commissioners knew trouble was brewing. A month later, Austin was in default under his contract and the county, by law, started the clock: He had 60 days to pay, or else.

The “or else” has arrived, and now the debt is the county’s. “It’s our responsibility to pay,” Mielke says. “It’s not so much about [Austin]. It’s about paying off the contractors.”

Aside from that debt, Mielke estimates that Austin owes the county about $65,000, mainly from its share of tickets sold at the gate. Rent, which Austin fell behind on during the summer, is current.

Mielke asserts that the news really isn’t that bad: The track has been wholly renovated and is “one of the nicest racing tracks in the Northwest.” And he’s already getting phone calls from potential operators.

“We have no desire to operate this,” says Mielke. “We just own the dirt it sits on.”