NEAR AIRWAY HEIGHTS, Wash. -- The Spokane County Raceway Park is looking for a new operator after Bucky Austin Motorsports defaulted on his contract.
The Spokane County Commissioners made it official today. The unanimously decided to sign a notice of termination between Austin Motorsports and the county.
But there is still a lot more to figure out. The county owns the property after using four-million dollars of taxpayer money to buy it. But the county allowed Austin to run the track and put in two-point-three million dollars worth of improvements.
The only problem is the county says Bucky hasn't paid contractors an estimated one-point-three million dollars.
County commissioners gave Austin time to make good on the debt. But he still couldn't come up with it after the 60 day deadline.
Now commissioners are scrambling to see if the county's insurance will pay the workers who have yet to see a paycheck.
"Our internal review will be as quickly as possible so we don't hang those contractors out any further than absolutely necessary," said Spokane County Commissioner Mark Richard.
Commissioners insist they did a thorough check of Austin and pointed to the economy as compounding the problem. But they say the real issue is that Austin didn't buy bond insurance. He was mandated to buy it and would have insured that his workers got paid.
As far as future plans, the county will start winterizing the track Friday. They say there's been at least three companies are interested in managing it. And they want to have someone picked out by the end of March.
