FAIR HILL, Md.--The meeting in the tea barn at Fair Hill, supposedly called to get input on how to keep the "Fair Hill Special Event Zone" a world class venue, was just another exhibition of government bureaucracy and incompetence.
Fair Hill turf trackJust for starters, anyone attempting to hold a meeting in a room the size of the tea barn should definitely have a microphone.
Josh Kurtz, secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources opened the meeting "to bring people together so that we can move forward."
Kurtz said the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is doing "a fantastic job of managing" the Fair Hill venue.
If managing a track that no horse has been on for five years is a fantastic job, well,that's bureaucracy at its finest.
The meeting did bring together close to 200 people, all angry and upset that the turf track is unusable.
The meeting was divided into three groups - two upstairs and one downstairs, each to have 10 minutes to discuss first, the strengths of the venue, then 10 minutes on the weaknesses and then 10 minutes on opportunities.
EVEN WITH the room divided in half, unless you sat near the person speaking for the DNR you still couldn't hear what he was saying or any of the comments from the crowd because there were no microphones.
The speaker for the DNR at the track end of the room said a strength was their WiFi, to which a man responded "What good is WiFi when you can't even jog on the track."
One of the most glaring weaknesses is that there is no one in charge of the track - no one who can tell you why the track is not being used or what, if anything, is being done to remedy that.
Over and over the DNR speaker at the track end of the room said "It's just a perception that the track is not usable."
He blamed the delay in opening the track on Covid and a change of administration.
He said that it was the racing''s fault that there was no racing , that "There hasn't been a cohesive plan proposed to run races."
The Fair Hill Foundation has been trying for five years to cut through the bureaucracy to enable the use of the track and to hold races at Fair Hill.
One attendee said the the steeplechase meet and race meets held at Fair Hill were user friendly and cost friendly and that the Maryland 5* was too expensive.
Another said "You're spending millions of dollars and you're not fixing the track. You're wasting tax payer money and you're not listening to us. There's been no racing for five years. You should seek out expertise, You should use people who have the expertise, Michael Dickenson could fix this in a minute. This is bureaucracy acting at the top."
Because the meeting was divided into three groups, there is no immediate way to find what was said in the other two groups.
Just another inadequacy for the bureaucrats running Fair Hill.
