Publication Date: Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Editorial: Does Palo Alto want to run its own airport?
Editorial: Does Palo Alto want to run its own airport?
(July 20, 2005) Approval of grant applications by City Council may mean city will need to keep the Palo Alto Airport open past the 2017 lease expiration with Santa Clara County
Pilots and aircraft owners are still flying high following last week's approval by the City Council of applications for up to $1.8 million in federal grants. The approval provides a "secure future" for the historic general-aviation airport, they feel.
We're not so sure.
The council on July 10 voted 7 to 1 to go ahead with the federal grant applications despite a required guarantee that the airport would remain in operation for the 20-year life of the grants. The grants are a $450,000 grant left over from 2003 and a $1.35 million grant this year. They would fund security systems and gates, repairs to an access road, pilot-controlled lighting and an automated weather-observation system.
In 2003, the city gave "conditional" assurance of the airport's future -- citing the 2017 lease. But when the county early this year demanded "unconditional" assurance of the airport's 20-year future, for both grants, City Manager Frank Benest declined to sign off on the grants. He told the county it was beyond his authority to promise to keep the airport running longer than the lease. The county is pressuring the city to allow it to develop an area -- not parkland -- between two existing airport-based businesses and Embarcadero Road. It wants to increase airport revenues. But the city's Comprehensive Plan and Baylands Master Plan preclude such an expansion.
The county's position leaves the airport's future literally up the air. A county Airport Master Plan is due out in late fall, but a draft indicates that renewal of the lease is doubtful.
The airport, as we noted editorially last month, is part of Palo Alto's long history, dating back to the mid-1920s. It is difficult to imagine Palo Alto and its baylands without the small planes gliding in over the marshes at sunset. It produces sales-tax income for the city, is convenient for business executives and helps rush both patients and organs (for transplants) to Stanford Hospital.
And we can empathize with the vigorously expressed enthusiasm -- and urgency -- of the aircraft owners and pilots who want to see the airport remain for the long term. Under the current leadership of Peter Carpenter, chair of the airport's Joint Community Relations Committee (JCRC), the owners, pilots and airport-based businesses have been loud and clear.
Carpenter has taken sharp issue with the county's direction in the pending master plan, noting that the projected economics will be calculated narrowly as direct costs and revenues rather than from the broader perspective of overall benefit to the community -- economically, recreationally, educationally and medically. Even under the narrow definition, he maintains, the airport "has shown a profit in four out of the last five years."
There is also an urgent "perceptual" threat in delaying approval of the grants, he said in a JCRC report to the council July 10: "The city's inaction has signaled everyone involved with the airport that the city is suddenly, and without discussion or public notice, unwilling to commit to the long-term existence of the airport.
"As a consequence, airport-based businesses and aircraft owners are now understandably unwilling to commit to or to make and further investments in the airport," he said. He warned of "further irreversible damage to the airport" if the city did not move quickly.
Yet Councilwoman Dena Mossar, the lone no vote on the grant approval, also is correct in that regional plans by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Caltrans view the Palo Alto Airport as having severely limited expansion possibilities and significant needs for improvement. The MTC regional plan also cites drainage and flooding problems and some interference with San Jose International Airport's departure paths.
Serious questions have been raised about the airport's future should a decision be made to convert Moffett Field to general-aviation use in the next dozen years.
We do not believe the city wants to be in a position of having to operate the airport on its own in the face of significant capital needs and the stringent requirements of operating an airport -- even a small one -- in today's regulatory world.
While we hope the county and city can find a way to extend the lease, the city should carefully review its preflight checklist before launching into the airport business again, as it was preceding the mid-1960s county lease.
Otherwise, without much "discussion or public notice," the city might find itself right back in the airport-operations business.
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