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Diamond Cup's failure not due to Wolfinger

by KEITH ALLEN/Guest Opinion
| July 24, 2014 9:00 PM

Over the last several months many letters have been written and many stories have been printed in the Cd'A Press regarding the Coeur d'Alene Diamond Cup and the efforts of the group headed by Doug Miller to bring the race back this year for Labor Day weekend.

I am proud to have been a part of the return of the H1 Unlimited hydroplanes to Coeur d'Alene in 2013. I volunteered in June last year to assist with the race in any way that I could. For me it was a chance to make up for my own long absence from a decade of previously working the races in the Tri-Cities where I grew up and came to love the summer sounds of the boats on the water.

In 2013, I directed and coordinated the setup of the H1 pit area near the Potlatch Hill overpass, and setup of the second pit area closer to the east end of the race venue where the Grand Prix and numerous vintage boats were staged. We placed all of the boats, all of the cranes, all of the support trailers, all of the team transport trucks. Any piece of equipment that was necessary for the successful completion of the event, it was my responsibility to find a place to put it so it was used for its intended purpose, and given the tight quarters we had to work with, even with two miles of shoreline, we did a great job.

My team worked closely with the vendors who provided the transportation/traffic flow plans as well as the security fencing and crowd security. Additionally, I worked on the placement of hospitality tents and food vendors along the spectator viewing area. I worked very closely with the transportation coordinator (Greg "Chilly" Gain) who did an excellent job of shuttling spectators from the fairgrounds to the drop-off site for entering the viewing area. Greg and the folks from Durham Transportation did an absolute top notch job of keeping the flow of buses going to and from the fairgrounds and in the end, of all of the moving parts and pieces that we had to pull together, Greg's transportation plan worked flawlessly, so much so that the one piece we feared would be the bottleneck and our biggest headache, worked perfectly.

Another important piece I had involvement in was the nightly meeting and debrief with the leadership of the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office and the Coeur d'Alene Police Department. Since the county had the lead responsibility, Capt. Andy Boyle and Lt. Stu Miller and of course Sheriff Ben Wolfinger were very honest with us after the daily events on where the weaknesses were with regard to public safety and traffic concerns. We did our best to rectify the concerns they had every night before the start of the next day. We reacted as quickly as we could, which in some case was the minute a problem arose, in some cases not till later to ensure the event was holding itself to the standards we had set for ourselves to put on a first-class race and to the standards set for us by the permits we had obtained to have the race in the first place.

As far as the race went and the experience that spectators, teams and local business had, my belief is we succeeded in putting on a world class event that brought considerable money to the area, from locals and from out of town guests.

Unfortunately, once the race was over and all the setup was taken down (pretty much in one day) and the viewing area was cleaned and returned to the condition it was before setup, the great success we felt we had with the event was marred by dismal numbers in terms of gate receipts. I'm not here to rehash all of that because that subject has been debated for almost a year now. Sure we did have holes in the bucket, as Doug Miller likes to say. Unfortunately, many local companies are the ones who have had to bear that burden.

Because of the position I held during setup, I was in attendance on Feb. 6 when we met with the sheriff's department, Idaho State Police, Idaho Transportation Department and the Coeur d'Alene Police Department to debrief with them regarding the 2013 race and the planning of the 2014 race. We admitted to the mistakes made and we owned the mistakes that were pointed out to us during this meeting and we offered ways we had already come up with to prevent a recurrence this year.

Also at this meeting, we (there were four of us there) were told of the need/reason to have all of the permitting in place including all of the traffic plans, the transportation plan, the crowd control plan, the on water logistics for the log boom and boat traffic flow/control, and our land based safety plan for fire and law enforcement. Doug Miller fully accepted the requirements outlined to him at that meeting and indicated during and after that meeting that a July 1 deadline for all the requirements would not be any problem.

As we all know now, on July 1, Sheriff Wolfinger denied the Diamond Cup the necessary permits for the race to be held this year because they failed to meet his deadline that had been mutually agreed to by all. Shortly thereafter, the Cd'A Diamond Cup group called foul because they said all of a sudden they had been faced with meeting a deadlines established by Sheriff Wolfinger that could not be met because the other permits they needed for the race would not be issued to them until after the July 1st deadline established by Sheriff Wolfinger. In my opinion, that's just not the complete truth.

The most important permit for the race is that which is issued by the Idaho Department of Lands. It gives the Diamond Cup authority to use the portion of the lake where the race course is set up as well as the pit areas where the boats are put in the water. We were told in October (another meeting I attended) by IDL that the process for that permit would require a completed application for how the course would be set up, the environmental impact and how it was to be mitigated, and all of that had to be approved by a licensed professional engineer. Additionally, IDL would require a 30-day public comment period followed by a 30-day period for the hearing officer to make the decision to issue or not issue the permit. Mind you, this was October and we were told that application could be submitted anytime from that point forward. Granted, the engineering work had to be dealt with but there was plenty of time to pull that together.

A reasonable person can easily see that if there is a 30-day comment period plus a 30-day waiting period for a final ruling, then the IDL permit process would take 60 days, no more, no less. If July 1 was the sheriff's deadline to submit all the final plans and permits for the race then the application for IDL permit absolutely needed to be submitted no later than May 1, 2014. Even then, the decision would be rendered on exactly July 1. It was submitted by Doug Miller and the Diamond Cup on May 10 (hence the IDL decision delayed till July 10).

Clearly the responsibility of not getting easily obtained permits in time (because there was plenty of time to do so) for the deadline rests solely on the shoulders of Doug Miller. Unfortunately, it's come down to the Diamond Cup and Mr. Miller to now claiming the sheriff was not acting in accordance with state law and while that may be the case for the legal experts to argue, the fault really belongs with the mismanagement and dropping of the ball by Mr. Miller.

I'll be the first to say it's a shame that Diamond Cup races won't be held this year. It was a positive experience for the spectators, the race teams and the business community including restaurants, hotels/motels, gas stations, grocers, campgrounds and many others.

There's no time to mobilize volunteers, food vendors, sponsors, the business community, service clubs and numerous other pieces of the puzzle to make it happen, let alone the race teams and all of their logistics and people.

But it's not the sheriff Office's fault, it's somebody else's.

Keith Allen is a Coeur d'Alene resident.