Response to "Airport task force reviews complex issues"
6/16/2005

By Zero Expansion/talktrans community members
www.talktrans.com
transportationtalk@yahoo.com


Undeveloped land at Flying Cloud Airport is the "crown jewel" of the Southwest Metro.
There’s no question that the southwest Metro is booming and it has absolutely nothing to do with Flying Cloud Airport. The real estate and business boom, despite the airport’s dreary appearance, and its 25% drop in flights over the last five years, is because people value the area for its open spaces, parklands and mix of commercial and residential development.
Airports don’t increase property values, they decrease them. "Airport noise imposes costs to members of society: decreased property values, negative health effects." (Institute of Transportation Studies, 2-27-2005).
With available capacity at Anoka, St Paul Holman Field and MSP, $90 million to expand Flying Cloud Airport is not a smart business decision. The relievers have no history of financial success and while the SW Metro has grown, airport use has declined. Services at the airport can be easily relocated. With a location worth $250 million, developed over a billion, the economic impact, the recreational and quality-of-life amenities from reuse and redevelopment would dwarf any proposed use of an airport now, or in the future.

We will have crowded skies if new self-regulated operations at Flying Cloud take-off.

MAC’s new "strategic 20-year outlook will reshape reliever airport policy" (EP Sun, June 16, 2005) 19, 2005) and change the types of operations and use at Flying Cloud Airport.

Imagine the sky with 1,200lb planes flying low over your house en masse, piloted by anyone who has a driver’s license. This new "self-regulated concept of doing business with the FAA" (AOPA Pilot Magazine, June 2005) will be coming soon to our city. For those neighbors who may not have been impacted by airport operations before, there will be no escape from them.

That’s because the FAA is "redesigning airspace," and allowing these types of aircraft unrestrained flight, anywhere in the air. The FAA says they’re involving all the stakeholders," ((AOPA Pilot Magazine, June 2005). We think they left out the most important ones, residents of the communities, in and around airports.

MAC says "no state or local taxes are levied to operate the reliever airport system." (EP SUN 6-16—5)

Not true. We are subsidizing the relievers in hidden fees at MSP and most of us don’t even know it. In a NWA article published in several local papers, Why the Many Should Not Pay for the Benefit of the Few, By Andrea Fischer Newman, senior vice president, government affairs, Northwest Airlines, Inc., she said "The fact is that Flying Cloud and other area reliever airports are subsidized by profits the MAC realizes from parking and concessions at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport." (www.talktrans.com)

Impacts from new airport use and in-state taxation will be damaging to community and residents.

MAC has not told us how they are going to continue to operate a deficit ridden and underutilized airport system, or how they're going to get grants from a diminished Airport Trust Fund that won't even be able to pay for Capital Improvements at major airports, or how they can abide by their commitments because of new policies and rules, as well as new types of aircraft that will be more unsafe and intrusive.

Any dedicated state fund or grant-in-aid program, or whatever fancy name MAC gives it will ultimately come out of our pockets. Minnesota taxpayers will be footing the bill for someone else’s business and personal use of reliever airports. So, we’d be paying twice: at MSP in hidden fees for parking and concessions and through another dedicated tax hidden in some transportation funding bill.