Life is entirely a matter of perspective. If my neighbor decided to create a half-mile twisty karting track next to me I’d do what any reasonable person does and buy a go-kart. Unfortunately, not everyone is as reasonable as I am and that’s why the local authorities shut down the operation within minutes of its first use.
This whole story will be a litmus test for your feelings about race cars, zoning regulations, sound, neighbors, and the benefits of asking for permission in an attempt to avoid forgiveness. I’m quite a YIMBY (yes-in-my-backyard) although my YIMBYism usually revolves around building more affordable housing.
It’s amusing to extend the concept of YIMBYism to race tracks as, in general, I also think there should be more race tracks in this world. This is clearly not a commonly held belief in Suburban Baltimore.
He’s Doing It All For Achilles
The best way to be truly successful at racing is to have a parent or parents who are invested in your racing. And by invested, of course, I mean willing to spend a ridiculous amount of money to help you win karting trophies.
This isn’t unique to karting as trying to get your kid to become a professional in almost any endeavor, whether athletic or even artistic, can encourage some questionable financial decisions. Up here in New York you have pre-teens getting vocal lessons from Broadway extras and advanced swim lessons for seven-year-olds.
It’s just that, as Aedan recently pointed out, the costs associated with getting into racing are at the extreme end. Take our protagonist (or antagonist if you listen to his neighbors), Charles Siperko, who is the CEO of a roofing company in the area.
His 10-year-old son Achilles is obsessed with racing and has been working his way up through the karting world so that one day he can become an open-wheel racer. Here’s what Siperko told the local Fox affiliate:
“He wants to be an open wheel driver. So, it’s hard work,” says Siperko, “He’s out of town every weekend. He’ll get up at 5am, go to the gym to work out during the week. He reads about racing, watches videos.”
He says his son eats, sleeps, and breathes motorsports. While other kids his age are hanging out with friends, Achilles spends every weekend traveling to Florida for practice and across the country for races. Along the way, he’s collected some impressive hardware, but the end destination is becoming a professional racer.
Drive, talent, and a parent able to take you to Florida every weekend are the keys to making it in this industry, but that last bit is probably the most important.
The Track Looks Pretty Good
Going to Florida every weekend has to be a lot for a small child and the drive from Highland, Maryland to Orlando is about 13 hours with little traffic. Laking a high-quality karting track nearby, Siperko did the only logical thing he could do and put $100,000 into a kart track in his backyard.
This track looks good from space with a nice variety of turns and different configurations to make the most out of a half-mile space. In the video, it’s even more obvious that there are some elevation changes as well.
One thing that sticks out is that there’s a brand-new house that’s quite large, with a swimming pool, tennis courts, and a lot of open space adjacent to this parcel that contains the karting track. It seems a little out of place with the other homes around it. Anyway, just a totally random observation.
The track was completed in January and it’s sadly only been driven one time. From that same article, Siperko says “He got on the track for 15mins. If 15 minutes! Maybe 10 minutes. Then my neighbors called the police and obviously they called the County.”
Strange!
The Neighbors Do Not Recognize How Nice The Track Is
A quick perusal of the Greater Highland Crossroads Association Community Group’s Facebook Page shows that people are generally not on board with this exactly.
Here’s what Sarah Troxel, who is reportedly the mom, said:
My ten-year-old son eat, breathes, and sleeps motorsports. His passion holds the seeds of a future professional car-racing career, but it’s not an easy journey. For a year and a half, he’s been karting. Every single weekend, he makes sacrifices that children of his age aren’t usually asked to – traveling all the way to Florida to practice. Playground time with friends, birthday parties, socializing at family events – he misses it all for his single-minded pursuit of becoming a professional racer. We’ve built a go-kart track on our private property so during the warm months, he can train at home. This is not intended to be a public track, no races will be held here nor will it in any way shape or form be open to the public!
He’s just a kid trying to make it in a difficult career. Here’s a response from someone named Kelly Frazer:
These people ought to be strung up, IMHO. Major portions of the track are right up against property lines, and construction was done with total disregard to set-backs, to say nothing of the impact this might have on adjacent properties. No application for a permit, no environmental impact statements. Numerous rules and regs about such constructions totally ignored. And now they claim they will sign up for a conditional use permit, whereby they will agree to whatever conditions the county might impose which would then allowing them to continue. Asking for forgiveness, vs permission. These scofflaws say the track is strictly private, not open to the public. They also claim that go-carts these days run on batteries, so noise is minimal. Pure speculation. I believe there is no precedent for such a facility within this zoning area, so the county has nothing to base any decision on. They will have to make up whatever conditions would be imposed in order to agree that such a conditional use permit can be issued. So there is the rub. I believe the permitting system is set up to favor issuing conditional uses in this neighborhood. Valid conditional uses include doctor’s offices, day care centers, and a number of others that have precedence and presence in the area. It is possible that the county will agree with its other residents that such a facility can never be permitted, and that there are no conditions adequate to allow such a thing. Of course the lawyers hired by the track owners say that they will conform to whatever conditions might be imposed, which position assumes that a set of conditions can be put forward. I think the county should come down hard on these people, deny any such activity as impossible to precondition, and then make them adhere to wet land remediation and removal of all structure within prior agreed to and recorded set-backs. Under penalty of fine. If they put me in charge, that’s what I’d do. But I’m not in charge, never will be, and since lawyers are involved, there will be a fight, it will not be pretty, great amounts of time and yet more money will be wasted toward an outcome that I can’t predict.
That bit about not getting permits is true, according to Siperko, who has airtight logic:
“I called paving companies, and they told me that it’s my property. If it’s not touching a main road I don’t need a permit. It’s my property and I believed that” said Siperko, “I’m not in a neighborhood. This is a family farm.”
I cannot confirm that the image from Facebook is accurate, but a search of county records seems to confirm that it’s correct:
The area highlighted in black is the property listed as owned by Siperko and you can see a house that’s registered to a different owner right at the edge of the track.
There was a community meeting a few weeks ago and this was addressed, though most people seemed unhappy according to a Baltimore Fishbowl reporter who attended the meeting:
Nearly all who spoke at the meeting argued against the track, though degrees of animosity toward it varied. Some went so far as to insult Siperko’s parenting directly. Most, though, focused on the impact of the racetrack on their quality of life, property value, and the environment.
“It’s so frustrating,” said JoJo Lerner, a resident who also lives on Mink Hollow Road. “He said he Googled, and he didn’t see that he needed a permit for this. But it wasn’t just that. He didn’t talk to any of his neighbors. He didn’t tell anyone…. It definitely lowers the value of everyone’s property around it, because who wants to live right next to this go-kart thing?”
Surprising your neighbors with a race track, if they are not me, probably isn’t going to work. Even I can see that. It’s now on the Howard County government to determine if a conditional use with some restrictions (limited hours/electric karts only) will be accepted or if he’ll have to remove the track.
This Could Have Probably Been Done Better
Far be it for me to suggest how someone else should raise his kids, but perhaps it would have been more successful if there had been some discussion with neighbors before the track was finished. This guy is a roofer so he’s probably filed a permit before.
If he’d have asked me I’d have definitely said yes to the track. Even a high-powered modern go-kart isn’t that much louder than the kind of yard equipment that many community neighbors either use or contract out to other people to use on their behalf.
Of course, Thomas made the great suggestion in Slack that maybe some arrangement would have to be made. In order for the track to be usable the dad would have to agree that my family gets some use of the facility. This is really a boon for everyone as steel sharpens steel and it would give Achilles someone to race against (in this case I would be the steel getting sharpened).
If you want one badly enough and file the permits, this isn’t an impossible journey. Alan Wilzing built a race track in his front yard and it only took him an estimated $500,000 in legal fees to get it through the local government. It’s all worth it for an IndyCar contract, right?
If you believe anything that comes out of a roofer’s mouth these days, then boy have I got some shit to sell to you at an amazing discount! That industry is currently replete with insurance fraudsters.
There’s obviously much more to this story. Quiet enjoyment property rights do not just evaporate in the absence of zoning regs.
I too dream of my own track, but I’m with the neighbors on this.
Finally, if it truly were legal, the police would not have been able to just shut it down without a civil order issued by a judge. Obviously there is something on the books that allowed the police to act.
Police take actions out of their authority often. But also often, its easier to shut down and let them go away and then fight that authority with government than it is to fight directly with the cop who THINKS he has the authority to take action. Also possible, there is something on the books but the police action went beyond what is specified in the section of law. This is far from the black and white of “if cops acted, its because they were right to”.
Yeah, I’m not so foolish as to believe cops only act within their authority. What I’m saying is that the cops found some thread on which to hang their action in this case. If there had been nothing they could find, no matter how flimsy, the roofer’s attorney would have salivated and the track would be used the very next day. That didn’t happen so I believe the police found something with at least some reasonable substance on which to base the action. Apparently that something has been enough to get to this point, so it must be a real something. Even public nuisance laws have reason to exist and be used. This may be one of those cases.
“Finally, if it truly were legal, the police would not have been able to just shut it down without a civil order issued by a judge.”
I wish this were true. They act beyond their authority all the time. Then they just cram it under “public nuisance”.
See my reply to Lockleaf.
I’m not buying this guy spent 100k on a curvy driveway and did not at some point think “Maybe I should run this by the town?”. Dude runs an apparently pretty successful roofing company. He couldn’t make a three minute phone call or drive to town office in between signing a six figure check? This dude went full ask forgiveness, probably because he knew there might some questions.
if this guy spent 100k he got scammed. Also why even do a curvey driveway and not just a rectangle parking lot. You can then use cones/spray paint to make infinite track orientations!
Yeah, I know some Irishmen who can do it for half that, hard to track down though, keep changing their cell numbers
But then you wouldn’t have debris, refuse, detritus, and other assorted obstacles for your kid to hit and be injured by. Remember, this gave this some thought before he acted. Why he even did a Google search! /s
Wait what?
10 year old will “get up at 5am, go to gym to work out during the week.”
Does he have a 4th grader school permit and drive himself to gym too?
I used to allow my hayfield be used as a track for my son, his friends, and neighborhood kids and their dirt bikes. A neighbor I don’t know down the street complained to my adjacent neighbor who told them to shut up since it was on my property. It was loud and annoying at times and created some pretty bad ruts I had to till flat again. I’m glad the kids grew out of that and are driving cars now, not in the hayfield. Also glad I let them use it when I did.
Like most of us here, I’d be the first neighbor to ask if I could bring my own cart and use it too, but I’m sympathetic to the question of why didn’t he try to engage his neighbors first?
Seems like that could have created an all-around-better outcome for everyone, certainly no worse than where things are now.
Not saying he doesn’t have a legal right, he may; but I guess I’d wonder what about his responsibilities as (what seems like) a decent person?
This situation strikes me as akin to what we often talk about here in terms of traffic on the road – people who think of themselves/their vehicle and not of the system which they inhabit.
How long did it take to build the track? I’m sure the neighbors enjoyed all the construction noise.
Probably not an engineered roadway here. Scratch off some black dirt, scatter some stone around, run your spreader, and roll it. Did he pave it in two lifts? I doubt it.
“He wants to be an open wheel driver. So, it’s hard work,” says Siperko, “He’s out of town every weekend. He’ll get up at 5am, go to the gym to work out during the week. He reads about racing, watches videos.”
Jesus Christ, the kid is 10. I didn’t start going to the gym until I was 35. Shit, when I was 10 I was playing with Legos and trying not to get hit in the face with basketballs.
Minimum age for karting varies between 6-8 years old, depending on association. Lewis Hamilton started at 6.
I hear your point but this is not that unusual a starting age for what end up being professional athletes.
No, not at all. Every successful racing driver today, regardless of series, started at an age when most of us are trying to ride a bike without training wheels.
Gordon started it!
Yeah, I know that’s the “norm” for this sorta thing. The routine and the private carting track just all seems a bit bananas (excuse my French). I guess I’m glad my parents figured out pretty early that I had no real natural talent, skill, coordination, et al.
But hey, who am I to judge. As long as no one is getting hurt then, do your thing.
Aspiring racers start young these days. Jeff Gordon was racing quarter-midgets at age five. And it’s all sports; ten-year-old baseball players have professional hitting coaches these days.
Nowhere in the article is it clear that he did anything illegal. The council meeting about it may not have anything to do with the legality of it. There is no evidence his actions REQUIRE a conditional use permit, at least not that I saw in the article. That being said, I actually believe that we give too much leeway to contractors who abuse city/county codes, not giving the city and its residents enough power to remove loop holes BEFORE damage is done. Property rights unfortunately don’t exist in a vacuum.
Your tag line is excellent, and very much in line with the work for which Ronald Coase won the Nobel in economics.
It’s tough for governments who set the rules to figure out what exactly property rights mean, and it’s perhaps an evolving concept even.
So what I’m hearing is Achilles track is being shut down on the heels of missing permits?
That’s where this story is tendon.
So these are probably the same folks who will tell everyone who will listen 15 years from now this:
“I knew that guy when he was a kid. Used to live next door to us.”
After he wins an INDY car race or two.
This guy needs to drop several K and buy a few extremely noisy 2 stroke leaf blowers.
And fire em all up at the same time. Several times a day.
Someone needs to call Jackie Chiles asap.
If it’s a private track on private property and the county doesn’t require a permit to pave parts of your own land that don’t connect to a public roadway, then thems the breaks. Should have bought in the suburbs, pussies.
Totally this is the suburbs. Less than 20 miles to either DC or Baltimore.
Now this may strike some viewers as harsh….
I guarantee we’re only getting part of the story, but in that context, this:
“He didn’t talk to any of his neighbors. He didn’t tell anyone…. “
Assuming that’s true, it was a breathtakingly stupid decision to spend $100K on this. A friendly chat with a couple of neighbors, maybe throwing them a bone with the design or a letting them use the property in some way, and this would have been a happy story. Now the kid gets to watch everyone turn into an asshole over his passion. How’s that working out?
I don’t know the legalities of having done this where he did, with or without permission, but if he’s trying to set up his kid in a career in motorsports, my guess is the $100,000 isn’t really setting him back that far. Becoming a professional race car driver is excruciatingly expensive, you don’t start out on that path without having some idea what you’re about to spend.
My point is not the money but the lost parenting moment about how to get things done and make friends.
I agree with you/said similar myself – what does this teach about interacting with others?
My guess is that if he would have asked, they would have said no. I wouldn’t ask either, honestly. The underlying issue here, from what I read, is he violated setbacks. The rest of the stuff he did should be fair game for him to do. Towns don’t like it when you violate setbacks, it’s one major thing they can easily control. I would gander that had he not violated the setbacks, there would be no legal argument.
There are also potential issues with water retention. He’s eliminated a lot of ground area to soak up the heavy rains that go through there and it could definitely have a detrimental effect on his neighbors.
Yup, forgot to add that to my list. You CAN’T mess with those two things. They are basically the only levers government can pull.
EPA can get involved if wetlands were disturbed. Say by filling them in. What’s defined as a wetland can be pretty broad.
Agreed on the setback. Had to get several permits from my town. That was one of the first things they checked.
ding ding ding did they do an impervious surface calculation and provide the appropriate BMP?
My CSI training says no.
Lol, this guy owns a roofing company. He’s totally lying about claiming he didn’t know he would need a permit to PAVE HIS WHOLE GODDAMN PROPERTY.
I’m usually pretty relaxed when it comes to land use, and I’m not a fan of NIMBYism. And I don’t even hate the idea of the track, but this kid has got to be the most spoiled turd ever. The quote of his mom claiming her son is making “sacrifices” while they build him a fucking racetrack without anyone’s permission… let’s get real, these people suck, hard. These people are obviously just dicks and probably could have managed to pull this off with support of the community had they you know, not been dicks.
Outside of basic dickery, I wouldn’t be all that concerned about the premise of this racetrack, other than the obvious stormwater management issues that this could result in. Converting an entire parcel that large into impervious area could result in some pretty serious issues, as you can bet everything that the owner didn’t bother to build any collection systems of detention ponds. You can also bet the neighbors are going to be pissed if the runoff from this thing floods the road.
Yes. I don’t know the local codes, but there is (rightly so) regulation around allowable paved area, particularly in flood zones. It’s possible the neighbors could see their insurance rates rise.
People who want to dictate what their neighbors can and can’t do should buy in a neighborhood with an HOA. That’s what HOAs are for. I hope he wins. But if codes and zoning don’t allow this and he just ignored them, then he’ll get what he deserves.
Property rights don’t exist in a vacuum. Would you quietly think “yep, his call” if instead, this guy got half his property rezoned as Commercial Use and built an 80 room 4 story hotel on the lot, overlooking your property and home? Because that use would also fit inside your “do what you want” rule of property use.
If it was legally allowed, yeah, there’s not much I can really do about it if he decides to built a Hilton where his pool used to be. Would I be annoyed? Yes. But ultimately all that shit’s his. Now, should people visiting said Hilton start parking in my yard then the caltrops are coming out.
In reality, I’m pretty die hard, “my property my rules” until my actions start bringing additional people in to the neighborhood in a real volume. So I actually do think, if its legal, he’s kosher on the race track. Until he violates sound or lighting codes. But the hotel is very different because it brings people in. I totally understand why people around Clarksons Farm get mad because he brings so many people in to the rural area.
No fair!
When I was 10, all I got was a BigWheel to ride on my sidewalk. At least it had a side hand brake so I could do power slides in the neighbors driveway.
I coulda been an F1 superstar, dang.
Funny how times, and neighbors have changed.
Growing up our neighbor carved out a “track” of sorts in his side yard and we used to ride our bikes, motorcycles, go carts and eventually cars on it and no one ever said anything.
Wonder if he had left it unpaved there would be such a fuss ?
There would probably still be a fuss, but clearing a dirt path in the shape of a track (assuming he didn’t start bulldozing and turn it into a motocross track with jumps and banks) would certainly have left less room for legal opposition.
I think this should be legal especially if only electric karts and only in daylight, but as the parent of kids that age, I feel sorry for Achilles.
Had a friend developing a rural property as a campground with tiny homes, he got it all permitted and dumped 500k into work- adjacent quarter put up an unapproved motocross track, four years later the track got permission, buddy dumped land at a major loss as nobody really wants to camp/relax against a the symphony of two strokes used in anger
If he’s not breaking noise ordinances or shining lights into their windows, the neighbors should remove the pebble in their shoe that makes them hate fun.
So you could say the neighbors are Achilles’ heel?
AH! You beat me to it.
If it’s electric only and no public use will be allowed, I don’t see the issue here. The main thing with something like this would be the crowds and noise, but if neither will be an issue (especially in a farming area where even the occasional lawnmower will be louder than a single electric go-kart) I don’t really see what the problem is from the neighbors perspective.
Oh no, this patch of wild/dead foliage outside of my property line is now a kart track, the horror.
Had he discussed that stuff with his neighbors beforehand and declared his intentions in those respects, he probably would be mostly ok. But he did it without regard to them, so now he’s got a fight on his hands. That’s not to say that anyone is right or wrong here, but knowing how wealthy suburban people are, he should have seen this coming.
Now the problem isn’t so much the track itself (regardless of what they say publicly), but that they were left out of the process and taken by surprise. Their feelings are hurt and they’re determined to be a pain in his ass.
I think we’re all kidding ourselves if we think this would have been any different if he discussed this with his neighbors, they would have still told him no and nothing would have changed their minds. If I were to venture a guess, I think he knew his neighbors would be against it no matter what, so he just did what he (thought) he was required to do at a legal minimum and deal with the social consequences after.
This probably would have turned into a massive legal headache as the second he said anything about this, someone would have lawyered up to make sure it didn’t happen. At least now it’s a massive legal headache that his kid can drive a go-kart on.
You may be right about the first part. But in my experience people are a lot more willing to say yes face to face when you address their concerns ahead of time. I disagree with the last sentence, though: it’s a massive legal headache that his kid *can’t* drive a go kart on, and is also a massive waste of money that he’ll probably have to tear up.
My wife’s parents have some property (old family farmland) next to a development where some stupidly rich people live. One of those stupidly rich people with an adjacent property decided to take advantage of a deed loophole and build a driveway through our property. Obviously many lawyers became in involved and are still involved. Had he come to us ahead of time and asked, we most likely would have let him do it anyway in a way that might benefit both of us. But instead he did the whole “forgiveness instead of permission” like this guy, and now it’s a disaster.
I’m not anti-racetrack and this looks like a lot of fun, but what person googles it and takes the paving company’s word that they don’t need a permit? As owner of a roofing company, he’s got more familiarity with the permitting process, including when, what, and who to ask than most people. That he didn’t get it permitted tells me he knew it wouldn’t be allowed.
If I was his neighbor, I’d be inclined to live and let live, but I wouldn’t expect that from others.
I think he knew what he was doing from the get-go. It’s often easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
Obviously I don’t know the local laws, but I suspect he was trying to get around the permits (and surveying and any other costs/delays) rather than trying to sneak it past the neighbors. If the no one complained, an inspector might have never come out or would have given them an “oh well, I guess it’s fine”. But now if there are permit issues there’s going to be a lot of eyes watching to see if they make him tear it out.
I would happily trade a kid on a shifter kart for my neighbor’s backpack blower that he fires up every Saturday morning at 7am and then proceeds to blow every single leaf off his 1 acre lawn for an hour.
My neighbor’s is leaf blowing right now and I feel exactly this way. There’s someone else in a three house radius that has an entire squadron of gas-powered blowers descend on their lawn 2-3 times a week. We oughta start there and work backwards, until backyard racetracks are the biggest problem we have.
The paving company taking this clowns money is chef’s kiss. lol.
imagine that, you offer to pay someone $100 large and then ask them if they think it’s legal and what do you know, they say yes
you don’t think the paving company has a returns policy?