Ok, so the county doesn’t have money to spend on a Senior Citizen’s Center, and has to charge for parking at the Courthouse, but can unamimously approve a driving track for county police?
The commissioners make the Parks and Recreation Department run through all kinds of hoops to get funding for a project that would affect thousands of people, and yet, has little comment on projects that affect a few.
“Gaston County may eventually try to recoup some of its investment by approaching other area police departments that will benefit from the track.” — a quote from the Gazette article.
We believe that’s wishful thinking on the part of the county commissioners. Their track record on “investments in the community” is not so good. It seems that it would have been more prudent to secure the collaborations and commitments to use the facility BEFORE approaching the taxpayers for money.
But again, people like Tom Keigher and Mickey Price like to spend OPM (“Other People’s Money”).
The Belmont Front Porch 
with regards to the comments stating the commissioners can’t fund this or that but can fund a driving track for the county police i would simply point out that this track is very much needed not only for the county police but for the training of all police officers in gaston county including the belmont police, that along with all policing agencies in the area, gems drivers, firefighters, emergency management team members and others have needed a safe area to learn the skills of risky driving–high speed chases, obstacle course type training, defensive driving and much more. currently, all the agencies i listed must have training and such training has been done on the driveways and parking lots on the gaston college campus where a number of near misses have occured with regards to college students nearly being hurt due to the lack of a proper course. not only is this a safety issue but it is an area that we must fund (public safety).