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City Council members remain split over whether the Palo Alto Airport should revert to being operated by the City of Palo Alto, but on Monday night they voted 6-2 to spend $105,000 to research the issue further.
The council voted to accept a proposal from Kentucky-based R.A. Wiedemann and Associates for a business plan and a “community-value analysis” for the airport. The city-owned airport is currently managed by Santa Clara County.
The lease between the city and the county will expire in 2017. The county has said it won’t renew the lease and city officials have yet to decide whether they want to operate the airport or consider other uses for the site.
Vice Mayor Peter Drekmeier and Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto voted against the proposed study, saying the city should first consider other options for the 104-acre area. Councilman Yiaway Yeh recused himself from the vote.
Kishimoto’s decision to vote against the proposed business plan was admittedly unusual because she chairs the Policy and Services Committee, which recommended the plan to the council last month. When her committee took up the issue at its Nov. 18 meeting, she was one of three council members who sided with a staff recommendation to commission the study. Drekmeier was the only dissenting vote.
“We tend to fall into a pattern of not wanting to rock the boat,” Drekmeier said Monday. “It seemed to me it might be more appropriate to have a bigger discussion about ‘Do we want to maintain an airport?’ and ‘Do we have the ability to really operate it?’ ”
Kishimoto said she had come around to Drekmeier’s view since last month’s committee meeting. The ongoing debate over where the city’s composting operation should be conducted made her particularly cognizant of how little space the city has, she said.
“I’m not talking about voting to shut it down tonight,” Kishimoto said. “I’ve come around to Councilor Drekmeier’s point that before we take another six to 10 months and $100,000 to keep the airport open as business as usual, maybe we should take a step back.”
But her colleagues were more swayed by her previous vote than by her arguments Monday. Councilman John Barton, who also sits on the Policy and Services Committee, said he was skeptical about whether the city should operate the airport but said the study would help guide the council toward the right decision.
“This is how we find out whether it’s a good investment,” Barton said.
The rest of the council was more enthusiastic about the airport’s prospects. Mayor Larry Klein called the airport an “economic asset” and stressed the importance of not letting it deteriorate. Councilman Pat Burt also stressed the airport’s important role in disaster preparation. Both supported the study.
“I think this analysis is essential for the council to make a good quality decision on long-term use of the airport,” Burt said.
The council also heard from a several residents and members of the Palo Alto Airport Working Group (PAAWG), which released a report last year arguing in favor of bringing the airport under city oversight. Each speaker urged the council not to shut down the airport.
“It supports itself,” said Ralph Britton, co-chair of PAAWG. “There is an obligation to our region and our city to operate this airport as a regional benefit.”
(Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be e-mailed at gsheyner@paweekly.com.)
As a former Palo Alto Planning Commissioner and a long time member of the Airport Joint Community Relations Committee I commend the Council for this action. Before anyone considers closing the Palo Alto Airport they need to realize that there is NO other use of this land which both meets the requirements of the Baylands Master Plan AND will not require(substantial) support from the General Fund. In addition, to physically remove the existing airport facilities would cost at least $5 million and the result would be a site which is 100% within the existing Flood Zone – not a particularly wise investment given that it will also cost over 100 jobs and hundreds of thousands annually in lost tax revenues.
“In addition, to physically remove the existing airport facilities would cost at least $5 million and the result would be a site which is 100% within the existing Flood Zone – not a particularly wise investment given that it will also cost over 100 jobs and hundreds of thousands annually in lost tax revenues.”
This specious excuse for continuing to subsidize the money losing airport is perilously close to the stated justifications for subsidizing the auto companies: that is, it would cost more to stop pouring tax money into these failed enterprises than it does to keep it up.
It should be obvious that in the long run, this cannot be true. Subsidies carried into infinity eventually will overwhelm any one time cost.
And in the case of the airport, there is not one whit of evidence supporting the outlandish claims made by Mr. Carpenter. We don’t know what it would take to demolish the airport facilities or even if it would be necessary since whatever more financially viable use for the land might make use of the facilities currently there. And as for the jobs: who knows how many jobs might replace any laid off airport workers. (And don’t we already have a jobs/housing imbalance anyway?!)
Mr. Carpenter – an Atherton Resident and pilot – hardly is the most credible spokesman for his cause.
He is in fact the poster child of why the airport SHOULD be closed: a wealthy non resident who wants to tax the people of Palo Alto so he can continue his expensive hobby on somebody else’s dime.
The Council needs to stop listening to wealthy people from other towns who want them to spend Palo Alto money so the idle rich can pursue their whims.
Close the airport and turn it into something more financially and environmentally appropriate.
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/square/index.php?i=3&d=1&t=6211
The contents of the previous thread still apply
Personal attacks say much more about the accuser than they do the person who is being attacked, particularly when the facts are wrong. I do not own an airplane, do not fly an airplane and do not expect anybody to support any of my hobbies. And I have never suggested that Palo Alto spend a dime to subsidize the airport. The Council approved study will definitively show whether or not the airport can be self supporting. Under the terms of the Baylands Master Plan the airport land cannot be used for commercial or industrial activities so if there is no airport the only other possible uses are recreational and what recreational activity does anyone think will be self supporting?
Facts: in 2003 it cost the City of Chicago $2.7 million to demolish Meigs Field – a single runway airport with no hangers and a very limited
number of tie-down spaces.
This study should be done by city staff already on the payroll. And after the study, it should be sold to the highest bidder.
The cost quote for abandoning the airfield sounds low. Think carrying away all the contaminated soil to an approved dump site. Have we not seen enough of this class warfare?
I would like to speak as both a Palo Alto resident and a user of the airport. There are economic and utilitarian arguments for keeping our airport. Those arguments are sound and have been clearly articulated by others. That alone provides a rational reason for preserving this resource. Equally important is the role the airport plays in enabling our most precious dreams of self-discovery.
Humankind dreamed of flight for most of human history. We worshiped the birds of the air and created mythologies of flight. Only the tiny blink of the last few generations has man’s vision and ingenuity made that dream real. Our city of Palo Alto owes its very existence to that same spirit of discovery and flights of the imagination.
While not everyone chooses to become a pilot, anyone can. The recent story of Jessica Cox, the courageous young woman born without arms, who overcame her disability to become a pilot, is proof of that. Anyone who has spent time in the community of flying knows that wealth, physical prowess, and education are not prerequisites for a love of flight.
To abandon our airport and the unbounded opportunity it presents would be akin to declaring our community irrelevant and turning our back on the spirit which made it great and keeps it great. The airport is irreplaceable. Throwing it away as a perceived quick fix to an economic need or a desire for more development is a mistake which would be regretted long after the expected benefits were forgotten.
Mr. Fellman’s enraptured meditation may be a put on. It’s hard to tell whether he’s serious about humankind and dreams of self-discovery.
While Mr. Fellman has every right to worship birds of the air, he doesn’t have the right to have the rest of us pay for his religious activities. The community of flying he talks about is in fact a well organized lobby of the well off airplane jockeys in the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association who flock to city council meetings whenever local airport issues are in play, and who are prime lobbyists for general aviation subsidies in Congress. It doesn’t hurt their clout that this group has a median household income in excess of $200,000 – well in the top 2% nationwide.
But the rest of us are hurt when taxpayer resources that are needed more urgently for more general and necessary expenditures are allocated to this tiny but influential special interest.
Mr Fellman calls the airport irreplaceable. This is nonsense. The San Carlos Airport, for example, is 10 miles away and manages duplicate and exceed what Palo Alto’s constrained airport offers while operating with a surplus. I suggest he look there or at Reid Hillview in San Jose for his ‘unbounded opportunity’ and ‘dreams of discovery’, and leave the rest of us in peace.
Contrary to Mr. Fellman’s hyperventilating, Palo Alto will remain quite relevant without the money losing noise factory that is the Palo Alto Airport.
It’s time to close it up for good.
I don’t know why the editors removed the portion of my post above where I complained that the airport is a subsidy for wealthy dilettantes in other towns like Atherton. Two thirds of the planes at the airport are owned by residents of other cities – mostly wealthy enclaves like Atherton, Los Altos Hills, Woodside and Portola Valley. And yet to the extent that it costs money to keep the airport open – or to use it for activities the benefit a small elite of mostly out-of-towners, we are subsidizing these non-deserving people at a time when we can scarce afford it.
Let’s stop this silly paean to elitism.
For me, this question is very simple:
If Santa Clara County Airport Operations do not want to continue to run this airport, due to its running financial losses, what in the world are we thinking in Palo Alto that we can make a go of it?
I really would like the airport to remain here, but we have no knowledge of how to run an airport of this type, there appear to be some structural limitations to the types of planes it can service that limit its revenue potential, and it is not financially viable, if you follow the report from last year around the County running it.
I have not seen the scope of work from the consulting firm, the question that I would like to see them asnwer is “what would it take for the City of Palo Alto to run this airport in a financially sustainable way, and is that possible?”
Santa Clara County does not want to continue to run the Palo Alto Airport simply because, unlike Reid Hillview and South County Airports, the County does not OWN the Palo Alto airport and it must seek the City of Palo Alto’s approval for any changes which it wants to make. Since Palo Alto would not agree to allow the County to add new buildings to generate additional revenue (which would violate the constraints of the Baylands Master Plan) the County has used this refusal as the rationale for bowing out. County governments do not like being subordinated to a city government.
I am confident that an independent analysis such as the City is now contracting to have done will fairly and finally determine if the Palo Alto Airport can be operated without any subsidies from the Palo Alto General Fund. If the report shows that the airport could be financially self supporting it is reasonable to assume that the City will then hire a qualified company to actually run the airport with no financial commitment by the City.
I am serious about dreams of self-discovery.
Rather than rebut each of Pauli’s arguments, I will address one that I think is critical. Advising me or anyone else to take my activity to San Carlos or Reid Hillview smacks of the very elitism he says he is fighting. For a number of social and physical reasons, those airports are both more sensitive to noise and community impact than Palo Alto. Palo Alto Airport is placed in a setting with less residential encroachment and more open space than those fields. Less obvious to some is the additional fact that they are both close to major commercial airports, which makes them less flexible. Suggesting that they bear the load of our airport sounds more about NIMBY than about any sense of community responsibility.
By Pauli’s standard – Palo Alto facilities should be only for the use of Palo Alto residents – Palo Alto should close the Golf Course, the Baylands Interpretative Center, many of its parks and the Stanford Shopping Center and the Stanford Hospital since the majority of the users of those facilities are not Palo Alto residents. And by Pauli’s standard we should keep the Palo Alto airport opened because most of the airplanes at Palo Alto airport are either owned by Palo Alto residents or operated by the superb flying schools at the airport (who lease the planes from their owners who might live anywhere).
Peter,
I will take at face value what you describe as the reasons the County will not renew its contract.
What I do not understand is how or why the reluctance you describe Palo Alto having around adding new buildings would be any different if the airport were operated by the City of Palo Alto. It does come down to whether this is a financially viable operation, irregardless of ownership.
If the County does not get the buidlings is says it needs from Palo Alto, I question that the position of Palo Alto authorities will change, even if the airport is operating by the City.
The Bay Master Plan was just updated, little that applies to the airport question was changed in this most recent version.
The County wanted to expand the airport in order to increase the County’s revenue. In my opinion the airport as it is presently configured can and will generate a profit if it is operated in a business like fashion and if it does not have to continue to pay a significant overhead percentage to the County as is currently required.
I do not believe that expansion of the airport is necessary for it to be a self sustaining entity.
Fortunately, the Council approved study will independently determine if the airport is or is not financially viable as a stand alone entity.
“Let’s stop this silly paean to elitism.”
O.K. Pauli, and also stop the dangerous class warfare. I believe 100 million deaths last century because of avarice and envy is enough.