Photo by kahle via morgueFile.com
The Paris Town Board has in hand the latest draft of an agreement with Great Lakes Dragaway designed to control certain nuisances associated with the business and avoid the need for the town to enact a formal noise ordinance.
Town attorney John Knuteson said the latest agreement contains significant concessions from the dragaway on matters of operating hours, lights, public address system and quiet days or weekends. Also revived is a requirement for the drag strip to plant trees along the east side of the track.
In the latest agreement Great Lakes Dragaway agrees:
- To reduce lighting by one-third, unless cars are operating over 150 mph.
- To reduced lighting at 12:30 a.m. and lights out at 1 a.m. on weekends.
- To limit jet cars to 15 percent of running dates and no later than 10 p.m., except for the Friday and Saturday of Memorial and Labor Day weekends, where they could be run until 11 p.m.
- To observe quiet days for Mother’s Day, Easter Day and the Fourth of July. In addition, the track will designate two race weekends per season as silencer weekends.
- To plant fast-growing arborvitae trees that start out from 5 to 6 feet in height every five feet along the east border of the property.
The Town Board did not act on the agreement, saying it did not have sufficient time to review it, having received it only hours before the meeting. Town Chairman Virgil Gentz also was absent.
Knuteson said he expected the major discussion regarding the agreement to take place at the next meeting.
Supervisor Ron Kammerzelt, who participated in the meetings that produced the agreement, said he felt it helped clean up some of the contentious areas.
“I thank Randy (Henning, the track’s owner) for compromising because he did,” Kammerzelt said. “I think I told several people when we entered into this that we never were going to please everyone.”
Knuteson encouraged people who had comments about the agreement to contact Kammerzelt.
