So, if the city council says no...

Fun electric karts
http://www.drivenraceway.com/home.htm

Points we are covering in our letters include:

1. It has all the benefits of sports (Davis does a lot of sports, too)
2. Guidance for younger drivers, diversion from street racing
3. Learn respect for driving, won't kill themselves before they graduate high school
4. It is a family sport. Most teams at races are families.
5. Rebuttals to the claims of noise and pollution
6. Conducting driving clinics for high school kids, and girls
7. Karting has a 30 year tradition in this town

More stuff, too. Can't remember all. I'm writing something quite a bit longer than a letter, complete with pics of kids and families racing.

Still, its the snobbery and scapegoating of cars that I think will be the difficult part to beat.

Wow. Subtly threatening your current lease if you pursue a new idea. Thems some smooth politics right there.

Is it possible to go directly to the source with each council member, maybe a nice lunch or two without sinking your ship? You need someone inside on your team.

1)  I suspect the quality of your political offerings is not up to the high standards of the politicians.  How much is this worth to you?  If it is more than the cost of lobbying a couple of councilmembers, then invest what it takes.

2)  It is one thing if you, a (potential) businessman, write a letter asking them to approve your plans.  It would have a lot more impact if you also have 7-year-old Billy, 9-year-old Cindy, and 23 of their friends whose parents live in the voting district write to their councilmembers and explain that for less money than a rock of crack, they can be enjoying wholesome activities at the track.  Have them include crayon drawings of stick-figure kids with happy faces as they zoom around the track.

3)  What kind of cash-strapped government would throw away a revenue opportunity over some environmental mumbo-jumbo nonissues?  Oh, yeah, you are in California.

I'm glad I live someplace that promotes kids getting involved in racing.  Look where $2.3 million of our tax dollars went:

Thanks for all of the input.

I know one of the council members personally. We were housemates back when we were poor students. I'm holding of contacting for now until I get a better lay of the land. (What really going on.)

Another team member knows another council member and has worked on projects with him. He's trying to connect up with that guy for a chat.

We are definitely pushing the "family sport" side of this. I have quite a few pics to offer, and am writing an article/essay on the subject that I'll illustrate with these and other photos of happy racers.

The rebuttal to the noise/air quality/neighbors part will be easy, and like ^ pointed out, these engines are quiet. They are even quieter than my electric lawn mower. I'm passing parts of the essay around for comment and I'm getting back excellent observations, such as these karts being the cleanest, quietest karts to have ever run at this track, and another person pointing out that currently the kids in town who do want to try karting make the 50+ mile round trip to Sacramento to do it.

I also have no problem pointing out that this is a great sport for girls, and that girls do well in it.

Another argument I'll purse, is that in addition to being a liberal arts-town, literature-town, education-town, bike-town, Davis is also a car town, and will recap the monthly cruise-ins and stats about local race shots and even a one pro driver (Justin Hall) and locals doing well in regional SCCA Solo2, and kids winning awards in karting.

Another is that karting is a sport, like all the other sports in town, and offers all the benefits of sports, plus, being equipment heavy, it teaches kids the stuff that makes for good engineers. Of course, while the other kids are home, indoors, alone, fiddling with a keyboard or joystick.

Another is the impact it can have on young drivers who might think reckless and hoonish behavior is cool. I drafted a letter for our local car club that emphasized that. In case you are interested, here is the link: http://www.kstreetstudio.com/files/dmc/DMC_Letter.pdf

One of DMC's former members is now a policeman. I've asked him to write, supporting this aspect of karting and similar outlets and guidance motor sports offers.

We are hoping that the hang up is a simple prejudice or misunderstanding of something that the council members don't really have strong feelings about, and maybe a few minutes talking to them and even a short demonstration will do the trick. If not, I think we have a local paper's instigator (local color/opinion columnist) on our side and he is already hammering the council for some nonsense stuff they are doing.

Interesting question, because the kart track is located right next to the police firing range/explosives training facility.

Between karting and Team Tinyvette we've got several people at the golf course. None had mentioned any talk coming out of there regarding the track.

We've been talking to on city council member who was unaware of the problem we were having and is wondering why the parks dept hasn't approved this, and notes that this is yet more evidence for why it is difficult to start a business in this town.

There seems to be a big picture issue here, and that is Davis has been planning on building a big sports park somewhere on the edges of town. Big, as in 300,000+ visitors per year. The whole effort appears to be driven by developers who want to get a hold of valuable land inside the city, land that is currently parks and ball fields. The kart track site is one of three proposed locations for this park. This park plan in itself flies in the face of the noise/pollution/neighbors concerns cited. Plus, I guess they are ignoring the fact that the track is built on a former dump. You can't build buildings there, and the ground sinks here and there. You'd be hard pressed to keep a ball field level. Anyway, it seems unlikely that the park will actually happen in the next 5-10 years.

And at this point we still don't know which city council members gave their opinions on this, or if in doing so they were advised by the parks people, or who. Our efforts now are going towards finding out who are making these decisions and what they know or don't know.

Another response we got from a city council member after the Davis Motor Sports Club sent them a letter describing how a track like this helps further their goal of helping people get a start in safe and responsible motor sports while also actively discouraging street racing and such nonsense.

Apparently nothing stated in the letter merited addressing in the response, but the guy did openly admit that he disapproved of an activity he did not know anything about and is interested in finding out more about it. I guess that is progress.