Mike Oakland, the guy who currently runs Hawaii Motorsports Center (which includes HRP, the track), has posted the following link on Forums Hawaii (General and SCCA sections) : Letter from Mike Oakland (please read the letter).

From the letter Mike wrote the following is really important : "Our existing variance for the extended use of the HRP, (signed in 99 for 5 years) has expired in January). Add to that I am faced with closing all the cesspools at the track under federal EPA mandate (by the end of this month). There are many other land use issues that will hold us back....." This means the track MAY be asked to close immediately (instead of the end of April)!

We need everyone's help. Thank you.

 

I was hoping the MINI folks who track their cars would have some comments.

Just in case you don't know how to contact your district's representatives or senators, here are some links that Mike Oakland provided : Representatives and Senators.

Comments from Mike O. : "this is how to express your concerns directly. If you don't know what district you are, after you hit the link, go to the "members" section.

The Bills Re SB1734 and HB 994. They are "carry over" bills from last year and are in the money committee's of each body. WAM or Ways and Means in the Senate (Briand Taniguchi, chair) and Finance- house (Dwight Takamine, Chair) many of your reps and senators are on these two committees..."

 

hey dakine...i'm gonna draft up a message to the HMMC members to try to rally up some support! do you think an email going out on Sunday would be too late....or would you highly recommend an email go out more like tomorrow?

lemme know!! Thanks!

 

Well the toilets are gone now and it's the beginning of the end for HRP.

Mike Oakland wrote :
"As of the end of December, all the bathrooms at HMC are closed. Since all of you are promoters and/or producers of events at the park, please insure that the fixed bathrooms that lead to cess pools are closed, secured and sufficient signage placed on them to prevent usage.

Also, make arrangements to have portable facilities available for your future activities until the end of April. Paul G. will be the contact for the Drag strip and interior road course. Tom B. will be the contact for drifting and super laps,etc. Mark M. will be the contact for motocross (RPM west) All further questions can be addressed to Me. by email

mahalo Mike O."

 

Good sample letters from Mike K. :

We need your help...we're doing great work in moving this bill for the new Motorsports facility along, but it still needs pushing. What we need, is as many people as possible to submit testimony to the Finance Committee hearing slated for Monday, February 28th at 3:45 pm in Room 308 at the State Capitol Building. You can do two things...show up for this hearing, and submit testimony in support of it.

The testimony part is easy, because we've done all the work for you, just use one of the following templates and submit it to testimony@capital.hawaii.gov with the subject line of "Support of HB 994, Relating to a New Motorsports Center".

To repeat, please submit testimony to testimony@capitol.hawaii.gov for HB994 using one of the provided testimony templates. Please modify them to fit your needs and location. Simply fill in the blanks with the recquired information. Its easy as pie. These are provided as samples, but be aware others will be using the same templates for submission.

Sample Testimony 1
Sample Testimony 2
Sample Testimony 3
Sample Testimony 4

Here are also the talking points that you can use when creating your own supporting testimony. These are facts about the positive aspects of a new motorsports facility.

Talking Points

And in case you were wondering just what exactly the purpose of the bill is...here is the explanation from the Committees on Water, Land, & Ocean Resources and Tourism & Culture.

HB994

This pretty much lays out what we're trying to do.

First, stay up to date with what's going on in our fight to save Hawaii Motorsports Center by visiting www.raceeventshawaii.com or clicking on this link:
State Capitol Updates!

Please, do your part..it only takes 5 minutes of your time to do this, and it will make a HUGE impact on our legislature. Just one letter will do wonders, trust me...we must show an overwhelming amount of support from the motorsports community if we want to keep our track. Let your voice be heard!!!

 

DaKine-

Aloha and thanks for the heads up! I completed a testimony and shot it off today.

Hope we win!

Aloha!

JCW04

 

JCW04,

Mahalo for your support.

 

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/ap...0359/1190/NEWS

AND

Bev Tate's "Auto Diva" column in the Cars section of the classified ads.

There's a lot of chatter in the different auto forums in Hawaii about these articles and the various efforts to pass the bills, but it's interesting, as the_beastmaster noted in BFC, "If you read closely, Campbell Estate said they never had a problem with extending the lease." I think a lot of people have suspected that M.O. had an opportunity to continue running that track "as is", however, he had US rally for his bills to pass so he could benefit from a new track. Kind of junk but hopefully our raised voices will at least keep our current track open.

 

Aloha folks-

I sent in testimony for HB994 and got this reply:



Thank you for sending us your testimony. However, this matter is not currently scheduled for a hearing.
You can track the status of this piece of legislation, and others, at the Hawaii State Legislature's website, <http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov>.

So much for that!

JCW04

 

thanks JCW...good effort but our state just really suck...

 

I sorta paraphrased what Campbell Estate said. Here's the actual quote.

 

Did you folks see the news coverage about the track closing? It was on KGMB9 at 10pm tonight.

 

Now this is getting good! Look! A SPOILER! http://honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/p...0318/1001/NEWS

 

Time to circle the wagons?

 

http://www.khnl.com/Global/story.asp?S=4443398

 

This was posted on another forum :

>>Was told that JR. from paradise lua has asked to call a meeting of all the racers...

>>When: Thursday Feb 9th 2006
>>Where: Kapolei High School
>>Time : 6:30pm
>>Why : track info..?

Here's the thread : http://www.paradisecruisers.com/SMF/...p?topic=1305.0

I think JR. is the person (George Grace III) mentioned in the_beastmaster's SPOILER article (post #13).

 

are you going to the meeting dirk?

 

I think I will (if my wife gets home in time) since it's just down the street. I hope it's not just a bunch of drag folks.

 

i would love to go to support the track and to find out first hand on what is planned. I have to do an evening shift tomorrow though. are any other Mini trackers going? I noticed from the last track day that i must have been up close WAY to many times behind cars around the crossover area. all the rocks did a number on my front end. lots of pepper marks and a few big ones in my chrome pieces. not cool with a car only six months old.

 

I doubt that any other MINI track folk would go since none of them seem to show any support for this thread (except JCW04 and cwlouis, but they don't track - yet ). Post #3 (dated 12/29/05) showed promise but not sure what happened.

I'll be meeting up with erik808 and going to the meeting for sure so if anyone is interested I will post what I find out.

 

I'm going to attempt attendance... I'm very curious about the future of the (or any) track.

I'm not sure how much fun it will be to get to Kapolei from Kaaawa at that time of the evening!

 

Alright Peter see you there then! I'll be there with Erik T. and Troy M. Sounds like it's going to be a HUGE turnout. I read on another forum that the Super Lap folks (Tom B., Chris M., and Mike K.) will be there too.

 

so how did it go? what did they say?

 

Here is a link to some comments about last night's "meeting" : http://www.paradisecruisers.com/SMF/...p?topic=1399.0

I really don't want to comment about the meeting, however, some facts are :
1) It was a meeting basically for the oval dirt folks
2) There is a lot of anger between the oval track management and the road course management
3) The oval course has already been closed down

The rest were speculations, blame, and a whole lot of yelling. I must say though that Feedback had a lot of excellent points that he spoke out about (even corrected many people on a few occassions ).

Please read the comments on the forum I linked and come to your own conclusion.

 

KITV's coverage : http://mfile.akamai.com/12891/wmv/vo...09476.200k.asx