December 13, 2005 Department of Regional Planning Hall of Records (13th Floor)
320 West Temple Street Los Angeles, CA 90012 via Fax (213) 626-0434
Re Agua Dulce airport hearing 12-14-05 CUP 1404 I wish to raise a formal objection to the method that the hearing is proposed to be held on this case. This hearing is a revocation hearing brought by the County of Los Angeles. There is no proponent unless the County is considered the proponent. Regional Planning has formatted meeting into their standard proponent versus the community format.
1. Equal time for proponents and opponents.
The hearing agenda gives the proponent, now considered to be the airport owner, 25 minutes of time to present his position along with three minutes per individual supporting the airport but restricts the opponents to just three-minute time for each speaker. It allows no coordinated opposition.
The Brown act at 54954.3, allows the legislative body to adapt regulations limiting speaking time on issues. It clearly intends that the public representing various sides of an issue be granted equal speaking time. The proponent has no special rights of speaking time over the opponents' rights of equal time to present their position.
We contend that if you offer the proponent a preferential amount of time to speak then you violate the rights of opponent groups to fairly present their position making the hearing challengeable in court for bias against the opponents.
2. Use of ringers to pack a room.
We advised that the airport proponents intend to bus hundreds of people who have no connection with Agua Dulce. These are a combination of out-of-town pilots and employees of various companies connected with the owner of the airport.
We think the Regional Planning Commission needs to inquire of the audience to find if the people are legitimate members of the community or simply ringers. We'd considered calling central casting and hiring several hundred extra's to pack the meeting for our side. Even though that's exactly what the proponents are doing we felt it wrong and did not do it.
3. Blocking the community from testifying
We've been told that the airport owner intends to use the busloads to fill the hearing room and to block the community from attending the hearing.
We don't dispute the right of the proponent to bus his employees to the hearing even though these employees to not work in his airport. We believe the hearing room is small for the hearing and not to allow all persons who wish to attend the hearing to attend and participate in the hearing must be continued to a larger room.
When we contacted the commission we advised that only the number of persons deemed safe would be admitted and all others would be forced to leave the room and could not participate.
This is clearly on lawful under the Brown act and would be ample reason to force holding them here to allow all to participate.
In conclusion
Please advise me of what you intend to do to bring these this hearing into compliance with both the letter of law and round to and particularly not making the presence of the community second class citizens to provide public input.
Charles Brink
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