In reference to Bill Kazala’s Aug. 29 letter regarding NASCAR possibly helping our roads situation in north Snohomish County, I don’t think so (“NASCAR could help north county”). The additional 5-cent gas tax that was supposed to help our roadwork situation in this state is presently not enough.
Talking with politicians, I’ve been told that there is more than $600 million in requests out there right now from local and county governments. Of those, there is money to begin about one third of those projects. As a state, I’ve been told that we are “about a decade behind” in badly needed road projects.
All that a NASCAR track will do is to put us in a situation that is worse than it presently is, with no reasonable way to fix it. If we allow a track to go in without the road improvements being in place, we will be in quite a pickle. Also, there is no good reason that other city and county governments should have to shelve their projects or be slid back on the waiting list so that International Speedway Corp. can make money off of the folks living in and around the Pacific Northwest.
The improvements that would be needed (and it remains a big question whether they would be enough) would cost more money than all of the other projects combined. ISC is not going to pay for our road expansion projects.
However, Mr. Kazala is correct about one thing, for sure. All eyes would be on north Snohomish County after the track was here, because we would be affecting traffic in an extremely negative way. I would hate for folks to endorse the track for the wrong reasons only to be told later by ISC that roads are our problem, especially when Boeing, in the past, had to “build its own interchange” and local citizens wishing to expand their business have to pay road mitigation fees.
James W. Nice
Marysville
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