Comments presented at the 1/26/05 Agua Dulce Town Council Meeting
In 1995 Supervisor Antonovich had the question of whether the community wanted a public airport (owned by the county) or the existing private airport. The community voted over 65% not to expand and make it a publicly owned airport.
The airport remained essentially closed for 5 years until persons unknown purchased it. The investors’ front man, Kirschner, met with some of the locals before he purchased the airport and thoroughly knew about the rejection vote and the opposition to the airport dating back to 1959.
He went forward enlarging and expanding the airport, playing on his self-determined loopholes in Permit #1404. He even found a private letter by someone at Regional Planning claiming that helicopters were propeller driven airplanes and therefore allowed in Agua Dulce.
His mode of operation is to build and expand until he gets caught and then apply for permits. The County just let him do anything he wanted, and validated his loopholes. He acted in an arrogant manner that proclaimed that he was "above the law".
L.A. County Dept. of Regional Planning, over the last 30 years, and the Agua Dulce Civic Association were inept at getting any conditions imposed on the airport. According to the FAA, the Agua Dulce Airport is a hangout for the aggressive cowboy pilots. Encouraged by Kirschner and his airport manager, they have harassed and intimidated community members who complained. This has been documented in photos, videos and synchronized sound recordings where the pilots bragged to the airport over their radios about "getting those people good".
Note: most pilots are good, caring people, but the outlaw pilots of Agua Dulce are not.
Various people in the community then forced L.A. County to document and notice the airport for its violations of the law. Condition 16 of Permit #1404 states that if there is a violation continuing for over 30 days, the permit shall be lapsed.
16. It is hereby declared and made a condition of this permit that if any condition hereof is violated or if any other law, statute or ordinance is violated the permit shall be suspended and the privileges granted hereunder shall lapse; provided that the applicant has been given written notice to cease such violation and has failed for a period of 30 days to do so.
No one argues, including the airport and the County that numerous violations have occurred and are still occurring.
If the permit is lapsed, then the airport will have to apply for a new permit and create an EIR for all of the impacts of the airport, starting at the bare earth.
Joann Swanson’s position gives the airport vast rights of operations and its impacts without these issues ever being studied in an environmental report. According to many Civic Association members, she has not polled the Civic Association members, as their bylaws require her to do before publicly stating a position. Joann strongly feels her compromise position is better than our position of opposing the airport.
L.A. County Dept. of Regional Planning has no way to enforce any restrictions against the airport, except in a very limited fashion. For example, this weekend Barry has advertised for the owners of various Cessna models, of which there are at least 10,000, to fly to his airport for an event of a catered luncheon and presentations from various personnel from Cessna.
The County, in its usual ineptness, claims this is not a special event, and since only specific special events are defined in their TUP regulations, they believe the airport can draw an unlimited number of aircraft without obtaining any permit whatsoever. They can do this as often as they want.
The only way to protect your property, your property’s value and your lifestyle is to close the airport. The Civic Association’s approach of negotiating our rights away with the airport is just like Neville Chamberlain negotiating Czechoslovakia’s rights to Hitler.
The only way you can keep these airplanes off your roofs is to close the airport. If the airport is closed, FAA regulation 91.119 require all airplanes to maintain at least 1000 feet in elevation above your homes. If the airport is allowed to operate in either private or public mode, the FAA allows the airplanes to descend to whatever level the pilot feels is safe. This seems to be interpreted by the FAA to mean their wheels don’t touch your roof. And most importantly, this is true even if the airport is a restricted airport, because the pilots are allowed to fly just above the runway to see if the airport will flash a green light allowing them to land.
It has been documented that airports cause reductions in home values of from 30 to 50%, and it makes little difference if they are public or private.
And to top it off, if Kirschner gets his compromise expansion as discussed in private negotiations then he, at any time, can apply for a new CUP to make it a full public airport and the environmental impacts would be characterized as inconsequential, because it would only mean a few more planes landing a day. When I discussed the issue of requiring a new permit and requiring an environmental impact report (EIR) with Paul Novak (of Supervisor Antonovich’s office) he stated it would be very difficult to get an EIR starting at zero because the impact of the airport is just not mitigatable .
This airport was allowed to expand from 20 airplanes and no hangars in a cow pasture to what they claim to be over 100 hangars and unlimited operations without a single environmental document, because they claim that they were permitted before CEQA existed.
This shows why the airport is fighting so hard to co-opt the "community leaders" to get around the EIR requirement. Therefore, we must have this permit lapsed to protect the property values and citizens of Agua Dulce.
We also have several other conditions to rely upon. First, if they claim Condition 16 is unenforceable, then Condition 15 takes over mandating the permit to lapse if any part of Permit #1404 is not enforceable.
15. It is hereby declared to be the intent that if any provision of this permit is held or declared to be Invalid the Permit shall be void and the Privileges granted hereunder shall Lapse;
There is no evidence that the airport was never leased to L.A. City, which allegedly kept the permit valid while the airport was closed. Ample evidence is also available that the third permit actually became operational and would have expired in the mid-1990s forcing the expiration of Permit #1404.
The procedure is to lapse the permit is we first must get a vote by the L.A. County Department of Regional Planning, then if we don’t prevail, appeal it to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, then if we don’t prevail again, we have to file a Writ of Mandate where an independent judge reads the conditions in the permit, which are so clear, and orders (mandates) the County to follow the law and lapse the permit.
This is not complicated because the conditions are so strongly stated in Permit #1404, they leave little room for interpretation. In fact, our Planning Commissioner stated he would vote for the lapsing of the permit had it not been for the compromises offered by Swanson and the Town Council.
"In my 20-some years (in public life), I've seen very few cases as egregious as this one in terms of ongoing violations," said Commissioner Pat Modugno, an Antonovich appointee to the five-member panel. "Quite frankly, if I had my druthers, I'd shut this thing down today just to put the operator in the penalty box."
Contact Charles Brink 800-773-5228 acton@wgn.net
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