Regional police have confirmed they are investigating an alleged report of dirt being moved at a local park, following community concerns that the displaced earth represents the early stages of a NASCAR test track, The Corn has learned.

The investigation, which sources within the service describe as “active,” “ongoing,” and “regarding the matter of soil that has been observed to be in a different place than it was previously,” was opened after a neighbour told another neighbour, who later told several residents in a community discussion group, that a stock car testing facility was being constructed behind the fairgrounds. None of the residents involved in the discussion have visited the site personally, but one was assured by a person who had heard about it from someone whose cousin lives nearby.

“There’s a guy with a tractor out there,” one resident posted, in a thread that has since accumulated eighty-four comments. “That’s how it starts.”

Asked to confirm or deny the existence of the alleged track, a police spokesperson stated that the service was treating the report with appropriate seriousness and would, upon conclusion of the investigation, file its findings in accordance with departmental procedure.

“The results will be filed appropriately,” the spokesperson said. “Members of the public are welcome to request access to the confidential database.”

Asked to clarify how a member of the public could meaningfully request access to a database described as confidential, the spokesperson said the service had no further comment at this time.

Asked to clarify what was in the confidential database, the spokesperson said that information was not something she was at liberty to discuss.

Asked, finally, whether NASCAR had submitted any kind of planning application with the township, the township, or anyone in the broader provincial regulatory apparatus that handles the construction of internationally sanctioned motorsport facilities in rural southern Ontario, the spokesperson said that she was not able to speak to that, but reiterated that the results of the investigation would be filed appropriately.

The neighbour who originally raised the report could not be reached for comment. The neighbour who heard it from the neighbour was reached, and clarified that she had not actually said NASCAR, she had said “racetrack of some kind,” and that the NASCAR detail had been added later by a different person. That person, reached separately, said she had not added the NASCAR detail and was in fact the one who had first heard it from someone else, who had heard it at a hockey practice.

At the fairgrounds, a man was observed driving a small tractor in slow, repetitive lines across a patch of mud, in the manner of a person who is grading a soccer field, which is what he was doing.

“I’m grading the soccer field,” he said.

Asked whether the regrading might, in any sense, be preliminary work for a future motorsports facility, he looked at the reporter for several seconds before responding.

“It’s a soccer field,” he said.

The community discussion thread, meanwhile, has continued to develop. By Wednesday evening, the proposed test track had acquired a grandstand (capacity disputed; estimates range from four hundred to nine thousand), a pit lane, a corporate sponsorship deal with a national auto-parts retailer, and a rumoured opening race scheduled for August featuring a driver whose name no one can quite remember but whose face one resident is sure she has seen on television.

The regional police investigation is expected to conclude in due course. Its findings, when filed, will be available to any member of the public who knows where the confidential database is, what it is called, and who to ask.