Year in Review 2016: All the noise about LRP

LIME ROCK, Conn. — The legal battle over Lime Rock Park’s (LRP) attempt to add Sunday racing to its scheduled moved slowly during 2016. Considerable time, energy and resources were expended by both the track and the Lime Rock Citizens Council, both in court and in the court of public opinion.

A recap: In September 2015, LRP went to court to try to amend the injunction governing the days and hours of operation at the auto racing track.

The track wishes to add Sunday racing to its schedule, among other things. Sunday racing is currently prohibited by the injunction that governs track activities.

The track’s neighbors formed the Lime Rock Citizens Council to oppose the change.

At about the same time LRP was starting its legal action, the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) took up proposed amendments to the town’s zoning regulations concerning the track. There was a lengthy public hearing on the amendments, on Sept. 8 and then Oct. 19 (still in 2015).

It was at the public hearings that LRP’s legal action first became widely known.

The P&Z met Nov. 19, 2015, and new regulations were added, including a section that prompted another legal action from LRP, appealing the commission’s actions. 

One item in question was subsequently dropped from the regulations by the commission, but the appeal is still active, and part of the injunction action.

The commission decided in April 2016 not to require the track to apply for a special permit for track activities (for the time being). The Citizens Council was strongly in favor of requiring special permits. 

Also in April, LRP made a settlement offer to the Citizens Council and the P&Z. Both rejected it. 

The two court cases, now consolidated, went to Litchfield Superior Court. In September, the judge dismissed two motions filed by the track against the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals, regarding camping, and in a third decision put on hold the question of modifying the 1959 injunction until the track’s appeal of the P&Z’s adoption, in 2015, of new regulations affecting the track is decided.

The judge also ordered the parties to meet in November for a settlement conference. The meeting occurred, but no progress was made.

The Citizens Council was busy over the summer, most visibly with placing signs reading “No Sunday Racing” and “Yes Peaceful Sundays” along roads in towns throughout the Northwest Corner.

The signs attracted attention — to the point that by the end of August, at least 100 had been stolen, according to Peter Wolf, a Citizens Council leader.

Wolf added that he and other council members have had encounters with hostile motorists who hurl epithets and make vulgar hand gestures. He said he suspects that the bulk of the sign stealing is being done by someone local.

The Citizens Council ran a half-page ad in the Aug. 18 edition of The Lakeville Journal explaining their positions.

The track countered the following week with a full-page ad in the Journal’s Aug. 25 edition, which explained the April settlement offer.

Skip Barber, owner of LRP, in a wide-ranging interview Wednesday, Aug. 24, was asked if he knew anything about the stolen signs.

“Yes,” he said. Someone stuck one of the signs in the lawn of a track employee, who removed it.

Otherwise, Barber said he did not know who was behind the thefts and had not heard of anyone “bragging about it.”

He added he would fire any of his staff if they were involved.

The two sides tell somewhat different stories. The Citizens Council’s materials emphasize that the track asked for a modified injunction that would allow 22 Sundays of racing — 20 muffled, two unmuffled — and they raise concerns about noise, traffic, pollution  and property values.

Barber said on Aug. 24  that the track asked for 22 Sundays in the expectation of a negotiation. He said the track is proposing to rearrange the schedule in such a way that would allow for two Sunday afternoons of unmuffled racing, on Memorial Day weekend and in July.

In the case of Memorial Day weekend, the Monday would be the quiet day, instead of Sunday.