now, most people in Queen Anne’s County have likely heard of the Travis Pastrana NitroCircus/Circuit 199 proposal being considered in the Town of Sudlersville. The Pastrana concept calls for a motorsports arena capable of holding 10k+ fans [though his brochure says up to 30k may come], a track for nitro rally cars, motorcycle ramps with air cushions, and a bicycle pump track — all of it within the boundary of the Town. It also comes with a modified noise ordinance that exempts motorsports noise between the hours of 7 am and 12 midnight.
WHY ZONING MATTERS
Sudlersville is a small agricultural town and has about 400 residents and a little over 100 homes. As proposed, the Pastrana NitroCircus concept is incompatible with the character of the town, violates its residential zoning, will adversely impact the whole North County, and is being advanced by irregular, unlawful means. Left without a legal challenge, the Sudlersvile Ordinances being advanced to accommodate the Pastrana Nitro/Circus concept would set a precedent that would render zoning and comprehensive planning anywhere in Queen Anne’s County virtually meaningless. If developers wanted to put a trash incinerator on farmland across from your house, or an Amazon center beside your backyard, or a prison next to your kids’ elementary school, you would have few options in stopping such threatening projects. In other words, the Ordinances advanced by Sudlersville’s government have the potential to transcend Sudlersville’s borders, impacting other areas of the County – like the huge motorsports facility itself — and are precedents for irregular land use decisions in other areas of the Queen Anne’s County.
That’s unacceptable, and that’s why QACA is opposing this project. The truth is, the pending litigation is something the Sudlersville Town government have brought on themselves by attempting to accommodate a proposal that conflicts with the Sudlersville Comprehensive Plan and, with its crowds, noise, traffic and congestion, affects too many people both inside AND outside the town. The Sudlersville Commissioners will have only themselves to blame if the Pastrana proposal falls apart in the courts, or if Pastrana decides (as he should) to leave Sudlersville and look elsewhere.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Clearly, the town Commissioners have not have appreciated, much less acknowledged, the legal and ethical mistakes they were making when they let this project be driven in part by a Town Commissioner who was selling Pastrana the property on which the motor track would be constructed.
WHERE’S THE MONEY?
So far, the Town Commissioners have failed to ask even the most basic due diligence questions — like, with specifics, how will this proposal really benefit the Town? What’s the financial and economic impact, plus and minus, to Sudlersville? To this day, no answers to these basic fiduciary common sense questions are available because the Town or County Commissioners haven’t asked them!
Recently, one of the Sudlersville Commission candidates said the Town would get $30k in tax revenue. On the face of it, $30k doesn’t scratch the surface of Sudlersville’s $6 million dollar debt, so how does this proposal actually benefit Sudlersville? Even if the Town receives $30k a year in revenues but has, say, $35k a year in infrastructure and public services costs to accommodate this project, that’s no bargain, no matter what motorsports personalities come to town. A “free-to-the-public” bicycle pump track and maybe a new coffee shop are good things, but they won’t begin to pay the Town’s bills. Without a meaningful economic analysis of how this project supports Sudlersville, the NitroCircus is a wishful thinking fairytale. So far, the Sudlersville government has wasted everyone’s time with the way they’ve handled the NitroCircus proposal.
WHERE WE STAND
At the moment Pastrana’s fleet of Sudlersville rally cars and motorcycles sits in neutral, idled by litigation that will first be heard in August in Queen Anne’s County Circuit Court. The affected neighbors and QACA will be telling the court that this is a case of unlawful “spot zoning”, where the Town Commissioners have arbitrarily tampered with their zoning rules to accommodate a development project that benefits one of the Commissioners who owns the land where the project will be built. Of course, Pastrana’s lawyers will dispute that description or try to justify it in some way, and the end of the controversy will be down a long and winding road of litigation. That’s where we are.
For 51 years, QACA has stood with the individuals and families who live here against projects that violate the central commitment in the first sentence on the first page of the County’s Comprehensive Plan: “to reaffirm our land use ethic to maintain Queen Anne’s County as a quintessential rural community”. We’re doing that here and we’ll keep doing it. In the interest of Queen Anne’s County, QACA cannot and will not let these unlawful NitroCircus ordinances stand as precedent.
We invite the citizens of Sudlersville and the Town Commissioners to join us against this ill-conceived project.
Sincerely,
Jay Falstad is the Executive Director of the Queen Anne’s Conservation Association
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