Several aspects of the August 17 Monticello Motor Club (MMC) article appearing in The River Reporter were troubling.

First, our Industrial Development Agency’s (IDA) own website reports eight jobs being created by this project for 2010 (the latest full-year reporting period) against the project’s job creation target of 25 (the figure used to help assess the tax exemptions previously provided to the MMC). That’s not an alleged job figure; it’s the full-time equivalent employment figure reported to NYS for the MMC by our IDA. Similar project employment figures for 2008 and 2009 are 16 and 16.

It’s not helpful to confuse the issue. Some project benefits and costs are legitimately difficult to determine. So let’s begin with something both basic and straightforward to compute: the level of full-time-equivalent employment provided by this project for the last three full reporting years mentioned above. It’s either 16, 16, and 8, respectively, or it isn’t.

Those who claim the project “now has 17 year-round employees... and hires 75 seasonal employees” are free to do so, but that’s not responsive to the project underemployment concerns I and others have previously and publicly raised.

If employment figures reported to the state are incorrect, they should be revised accordingly; if they’re correct, then, well, you know.

Second, why should a racetrack located at the site of a former small county airport now necessitate a noise level so objectionable to residents living close by? The implication appears to be threefold: first, that the former airport was servicing large, noisy passenger aircraft more or less all day long; second, that a cost-effective noise solution isn’t available; and last, that those affected should accept their lot in life, be grateful to the MMC, have nothing better to do with their time than complain, and should therefore stop complaining. (If I’ve got that wrong, I’d welcome a response.)

I don’t live very close to the MMC, so I’m not directly affected the way some other town residents who do are. But I’ve listened to enough concerns expressed over this project at town and county meetings to know that a square deal hasn’t been had by all—and for me that’s the sad part, because I don’t understand why it has to be that way.

I’m not a mechanic, so maybe when someone resolves the employment mystery outlined above they can also explain why vehicles now operating on this track can’t be adequately equipped with mufflers, mufflers to restore much of the peace of mind lost to some nearby residents. But I’ll provide an amateur’s hunch and suggest the answer isn’t that they can’t be so equipped, but rather that noise is an important part of the thrill of high-speed racing; as a reformed (almost) motorcycle noise junky, I understand that. But I also understand that people have a right to feel secure in their homes, valued community members who’ve worked long and hard much of their lives for those homes—and in some cases perhaps planned on living out the rest of their lives in them. What I can’t understanding is why a project in our community seems to think it’s entitled to take that sense of security from them, simply on the basis of however much, or little, prosperity it believes its responsible for producing, regardless of whether that prosperity squares with the facts.

Everyone wants the MMC to succeed. It’s in our interest as town and county residents for it to do so—but not at the expense of those being pushed aside because of their lack of financial and political clout.

[Dave Colavito is a resident of Rock Hill, NY.]