Honey Lake Motocross Moves September Race Out Of County

It does not sound like they are getting a fair shake, I guess we will have to wait and see what happens.

Taken from the Lassen County News:

As Lassen County prepares to collect the full $153,000 in costs for monitoring noise at the Honey Lake Motocross Park in Milford, the park’s owners are moving the next race to another site.

Rather than wait for the county “to force us into something or back us into a corner” or take “sort of action to halt us in our tracks,” Motocross Park owner Larry Wosick said he and his wife, Lise, have cancelled the September race at the park and moved the event to a track in Marysville.

“They could help us or they could not,” Wosick said. “We’re at the point now we’ve given six years to the community and we don’t need this. We love it. It’s enriched our lives … but there’s only so much, too, you could take. … I guess the future of the park lies with the Board of Supervisors; people need to look closely at what they do.”

A 2003 court order settling a neighbor’s lawsuit over excessive noise from motocross races states the track cannot operate without noise monitoring. After the board rejected the Wosicks’ offer to pay less than half the costs, its members voted on Tuesday, July 17 to collect the full amount the county spent to comply with the court order.

Lassen County Treasurer Richard Egan sent Park owners Larry and Lise Wosick a bill in May for $135,000 worth of noise monitoring between June 1, 2004, and November 16, 2006. The bill Egan sent did not include the cost of noise monitoring in 2007, according to a letter, dated July 18, County Counsel R. Craig Settlemire sent the Wosick’s attorney, John S. Kenny, of Redding.

The Wosicks responded by offering the county $57,600, which would leave county taxpayers to foot the remaining $77,400 the county paid Wilson, Ihrig and Associates to monitor noise at the motocross park.

The Wosicks based their offer, according to a July 18 letter Larry Wosick wrote to this newspaper, on what they paid a noise-monitoring firm known as Brown Buntin to monitor noise four years ago.

“This figure was apparently arrived at by taking the total number of events monitored by Wilson, Ihrig on behalf of the county (32 in number, counting six in 2007) and multiplying it by the $1,800 per event the Wosicks allege they paid Brown-Buntin in 2003,” Settlemire’s letter said.

Wosick’s letter said he did not expect the county to pay “my monitoring bills,” but did “expect the county to be held responsible for the excess costs due to reckless spending on the ridiculous scope of monitoring they were doing.” He added, “This facility brings in enough tourism and revenue even if it does cost the county a bit for the mistake."