Mat-Su Borough loosens racetrack regulations

PALMER — Nonprofit racetracks no longer have anything to fear from borough regulations.

“I think these racetrack regulations are bringing back the intent of the code when it was passed. That wasn’t ‘take away our private property rights,’ it was ‘regulate a racetrack in downtown Palmer’,” Andy Anderson, of Sutton, told the assembly on Tuesday when it considered a raft of amendments to the racetrack codes.

The changes, among other things, did away with a rule restricting racing to the summer, made rules applicable only to for-profit tracks, and tweaked the rules about short-duration noises and how loud they can be.

The changes began with an effort out of Big Lake. The local Lions Club, which runs snowmachine races there during the winter, was worried that their operations could run afoul of borough regulations. Nobody was trying to shut them down, it was just a concern about whether they were within the letter of the law.

Anderson had similar concerns. He runs a private motocross training track on his land in Sutton.

The only person to testify at the meeting who actually ran a commercial track is Earl Lackey, who runs Alaska Raceway Park in Butte. He pointed out that some on the assembly are business owners themselves and said that the racetrack singles out a specific type of business for extra regulations.

“It’s time to throw this whole ordinance out and allow racetracks to operate under the same rules as your business,” he told the assembly.

Lackey also noted that his track, founded in 1964, is as old as the borough itself.

The borough didn’t do quite that. But it came pretty close, in a way, on a proposal from assemblyman Ron Arvin to make the racetrack regulations applicable only in the borough’s core area — the area surrounding Palmer and Wasilla.

Assemblyman Jim Sykes pointed out that, by his estimation, there was only one racetrack currently operating in the borough — Lackey’s — and it fell outside of the core area.

“There are no functional racetracks in the core area,” Sykes said. “Wouldn’t this make the entire ordinance irrelevant?”

Mayor Larry DeVilbiss pointed out that the racetrack regulations initially sprang up in reaction to the development of Northstar Speedway, which is currently shuttered but which is situated south of the Parks Highway near Trunk Road in a residential area.

“The irony is that this in all of its intricacy began to address a racetrack in the core area,” DeVilbiss said.

The move to make the regulations exclusive to the core failed on a 4-3 vote.

Regardless of whether it targeted Northstar specifically, it includes places like Raceway Park now. At least one person who lives near the track, Gregory Nilsson, said sound from the racetrack overpowers conversations at his home a mile from the facility.

“With all respect to Earl Lackey, his business is a nuisance business,” he said.

Arvin objected to all the talk about one specific business. He said that the borough should be looking at this as an opportunity to allow racing to flourish.

“Increasing business, increasing dollars moving in the economy, that’s what we’re talking about,” he said. “I don’t think we should be discounting others that want to come here and consider having a commercial racetrack and what they might need to do, what they might desire to do.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.