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Palo Alto airport, potential long-term problems...
I was just forwarded this from my flying club. They've decided to stop accepting FAA funding, along with its 20 year strings to keep the airport open. ========================== from Heather Wagner and your club scheduler at http://www.AircraftClubs.com/ ... From: Peter Carpenter To: "Bob Lenox" Subject: Updated Action Plan for June 6 Palo Alto City Council meeting regarding the future of PAO -added Transportation Master Plan info Sent: Friday, June 3, 2005 9:13 AM The Palo Alto City Manager has refused to co-sign a grant application for Federal funds for the Palo Alto Airport. This decision has profound financial and long term implications for the airport. Background: Palo Alto has had an airport for more than 80 years. The first airport was on Stanford land, the second near Embarcadero, the third at the site of the present Golf Course and then it was moved to its current location and significantly down sized in order to allow the building of the Golf Course. The land is owned by the City of Palo Alto and is leased to the County of Santa Clara for the operation of the Airport. The 50 year lease agreement between the City and County for the operation of the Palo Alto airport expires in 2017. All FAA grants require a 20 year assurance. Since the lease expiration date is only 12 years off, the City of Palo Alto must agree that the airport will continue in operation beyond the current lease time frame. Who and how the airport operates is not material, simply that the it will continue as an airport. The Palo Alto City Manager has just refused to cosign the most recent grant application. As a part of Palo Alto's transportation and recreation infrastructure, the airport requires periodic maintenance and updating. The money that was being applied for is generated by fees paid for by users, coming from the FAA's Airport Improvement Program funds. The grant application was for pilot actuated lighting, new weather reporting equipment, and some fencing upgrades. The City Manager, by his refusal to cosign the grant application, has caused the cancellation of the current grant request and jeopardizes Federal grants already received. As much as $2 Million has been lost by the City Manager's decision. No city or general taxpayer money is at stake here. The airport is an important part of our community, valued not only as a business and recreational facility that helps make Palo Alto a special place, but also recognizing the economic benefits the infrastructure allows. The airport is specifically included as an essential element of the long standing Palo Alto Baylands Master Plan. The Transportation Master Plan of the City of Palo Alto, available at http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/compplan/transport.html, states this policy T-57: "Support the continued vitality and effectiveness of the Palo Alto Airport without significantly increasing its intensity or intruding into open space areas. The Airport should remain limited to a single runway and two fixed base operators." Palo Alto also has a long standing mutual sharing agreement with Sunnyvale that Sunnyvale will provide Palo Alto with waste disposal facilities in return for Palo Alto providing a local airport. The City Manager did not consult with Sunnyvale regarding his unilateral decision to abrogate that Council approved agreement nor did he consult with the Palo Alto City Council regarding his decision to act contrary to the Council approved Baylands Master Plan. The City Manager did not consult with the public, with the airport community or even the City sponsored Joint Community Relations Committee for the Palo Alto Airport regarding his decision. This unilateral action by the City Manager and his comments to the press that Palo Alto has no interest in the airport threaten the long term existence of the Palo Alto Airport and have seriously jeopardized, if not destroyed, any trust that might have existed between the airport community and the City Manager. Just as years ago the decision not to dredge lead inevitably to the closure of the Palo Alto Yacht Harbor, this decision to reject Federal funding to maintain and improve the airport has started us down the same path. Unless the airport community rises up en masse to protest this shortsighted, unwise and unauthorized decision by a City Manager (who should be concerned with preserving City assets and managing a deficit budget rather than turning away Federal funds) there will not be a lease extension or an alternative long term stewardship for the airport and the airport will be allowed to slowly deteriorate until it will eventually no longer be functional. This is not an idle threat -- unless we act NOW the City Manager has started down a road towards closure of the Palo Alto Airport. Rumor has it that he wants the airport land for other uses -- fortunately it is not his land. City Council: The City Council's next meeting is June 6 at 250 Hamilton Ave. and it begins at 7 PM. Each meeting opens with public comments and each speaker is allowed 3 minutes to speak. Please arrive a few minutes early to fill out a speaker's card which must be given to the City Clerk. After all the airport advocates have spoken and the Council gets ready to move on to its regular agenda, the airport advocates should stand up and leave en masse to demonstrate our numbers. Please plan on attending and speaking at this meeting. Please pass this message on to all of your airport friends. Bring your family and neighbors. Be polite, concise, respectful and resolved. (I will unfortunately be attending a meeting, of the United States International University -Kenya Board on which I serve, in Nairobi on the 6th, so I rely on the rest of you to carry the torch.) What the Council needs to see is righteous indignation by a lot of people for the City Manager's decision not to co-sign the grant application, for his total failure to consult with anybody and for his failure to understand the importance of the Palo Alto Airport. It is vital that all members of the airport community express their personal views on this issue. This will be democracy in action -- each person should speak their own mind and from their own script, but speak we must. Our silence or absence will be a clear sign of acquiescence to the City Manager's decision. The Council should be urged to pass a resolution endorsing the long term existence of the airport, as affirmed in the Baylands Master Plan and as embodied in the regional services agreement between Palo Alto and Sunnyvale ( Palo Alto will provide an airport and Sunnyvale will provide a waste management facility), and directing the City Manager to figure out who is going to run the airport -- the County or a new Special District or whatever. Draft Resolution The Palo Alto City Council hereby reaffirms, consistent with the Baylands Master Plan and Palo Alto's regional sharing agreement(s), that the Palo Alto Airport is an essential long term transportation and recreational component of Palo Alto's infrastructure and that no actions which adversely impact the Palo Alto Airport shall be taken without Council approval. |
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