When local motocycle engineer and promoter Ted DeVol visited the Buckley City Council July 28, his throng of motocross enthusiasts filled the Multi-Purpose Center chambers.
By contrast, only four of the seven city council members were in attendance.
The crowd was on hand to lend moral support to DeVol, who unveiled his desire to offer a motocross facility to the Plateau. It is DeVol’s goal to lease 80 acres of Department of Social and Health Services land to create a motocross facility, with a minimum of environmentally invasive “improvements” to the DSHS property just east of the Rainier School in Buckley. The majority of the leased acreage would be used for parking.
DeVol’s presentation included a letter from 31st Legislative District State Rep. Christopher Hurst, who penned a letter of support to Chris Olson, the DSHS director of lands and buildings.
Hurst endorsed DeVol as being a “major figure in the motocross world for nearly thirty years” and explained that DeVol was prepared to be responsible for alleviating such potential disturbances as dust and noise.
DeVol intends to put a damper on those concerns by implementing regular watering schedules for the track and the parking lot and creating berms to muffle the noise that may perturb established residents.
“It sounds like a great idea on the surface and a notion well worth exploring, because there is a definite (need) for a motocross track on the Plateau and in the Puget Sound area,” said Mayor Patricia Johnson, who was quick to offer a caveat.
“The jury is still out though. Mr. DeVol will have to first get the approval of the DSHS to lease the land and then get zoning approval from Pierce County, because that agricultural and forest land was not originally earmarked to have a motocross track constructed upon it.”
Johnson said she would rather have motocross people on an organized track, instead of going into the foothills, mountains and trails, tearing up the natural habitat.
DeVol, she said, “has earned the reputation for achieving his goals in a top notch and expeditious manner, so I feel as though if anyone can clear all of the hurdles he will be facing, it is him.”
Johnson said DeVol would have to clear all the state hurdles before the city takes action.
In other action July 28, the Buckley council:
• authoriized Gray and Osborne Inc. to begin engineering work on the repair of the water transmission main that was damaged during the January 2009 storm. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which will be paying for 75 percent of the cost of the water main repair, has instructed the city to break the project into three individual funding phases.
Gray and Osborne has prepared a scope of work that includes engineering, design, bidding, and construction management of all three phases of the repair.
The initial phase of the three-pronged recovery procedure on Buckley’s primary source of water will be the removal of debris around the headwaters of South Prairie Creek; other phases will entail the re-enforcement of the damaged areas and the repair of the water main.
• directed Workforce federal stimulus funding toward paying the benefits and salaries of four employees working 20 hours per week’ the financial stimulus is geared toward helping youth find summer employment.
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