AN OPEN LETTER TO THE REMAINING SUPPORTERS OF A COMMERCIAL
airport at El Toro (opponents are welcome to read along, too):
Well, it looks like our no-brainer airport needs brain surgery. The people have spoken. Through their endorsement of Measure F they have registered a loud “no” to the commercial airport at El Toro,at least as it has been proposed, planned and presented.
Crazy? I think so and you think so, but in a democracy, sometimes that’s the way the runway crumbles. We’ve made the intellectual arguments until we’re blue in the face,the economic benefits of an airport, the region’s pressing need for increased air capacity, the terrible waste of a multi-billion-dollar asset should the runways be abandoned, the likelihood that alternative development of the site would have more severe negative consequences on the surrounding community (and/or require huge expenditures of local taxpayer funds), and on an on. It hasn’t worked.
We can cry about being badly outspent in this campaign or that the timing was awful (who cares about creating jobs when everyone’s working?) or that the county administration and supervisors don’t know what they’re doing. It doesn’t change anything.
Yes, Measure F could be overturned in court, and failing that, the airport could possibly be created anyway by the implementation of a joint powers authority beyond the reach of Measure F. One or both approaches might succeed, and wouldn’t they be clever ways to circumvent the troublesome will of the people?
I agree that the airport should continue to be pursued in the back channels, because if public opinion can change in one direction, it can change in the other. And Measure F is unlikely to be the last vote on the airport, which still holds a two-out-of-three edge in ballot tests.
But at the end of the day, it is unlikely that an airport will prevail unless there is at least an arguable majority in favor of it.
Which means that we who support the El Toro airport have to do more than make Machiavellian maneuvers or barrage voters with poppycock about South County vs. North County, the world against Newport Beach, prisoners on the loose in the city of Orange or an international airport at Los Alamitos.
No, what we who support the airport need to do, first and foremost, is to listen to what the people of Orange County have said in their Measure F vote, and then determine if there is some way to reconcile those feelings with an airport at El Toro.
And I think there still is. I say this in part because even a few anti-airport friends have privately confided to me that, now that Measure F has taken the swagger out of the pro-airport camp, maybe both sides can start talking seriously about a “reasonable” airport plan. One such person agreed with my characterization of his fellow airport foes as the dog that has finally caught the bus,what will they do with it now?
I believe the voters have said two main things: One, that they now prefer the vision of Orange County as presented by airport opponents to the one presented by airport supporters and, two, that they don’t believe an airport would be what its supporters say it would be.
The challenge for we airport supporters is, then, to boil it down to two words, vision and trust. Oh, and a third, which may require a big gulp: compromise.
Having said all this, here is yours truly’s four-step program for saving the El Toro Airport:
1. Promote cheap and convenient flights.
That’s got to be the vision behind an El Toro airport. Airport foes have created, no matter how cockeyed we may feel it is, a vision of a bucolic, peaceful South County without an airport. That’s theirs, and we aren’t going to take it back from them. But we can counter with a vision of a reasonably unobtrusive airport that will enable a 21st century Orange County to enjoy the kind of air transportation its mobile, active and affluent citizens will desire.
In fact, it’s amazing that we haven’t been hitting this theme harder. What you see below is a bumper sticker that is being distributed by Newport Beach entrepreneur Jim de Boom, who said he’s tired of what I recently referred to as the John Wayne “tax.” “I had to fly to Minneapolis, and it was $1,700 out of John Wayne and $389 out of LAX,” said de Boom. Yours truly recently checked the cheapest like-flights to three cities from the two airports. The price of flying to New York was the same, but it cost $110 more to fly to Chicago from John Wayne, and $298 more to fly to Denver. (de Boom will be glad to send you a sticker if you contact him at (949) 660-8665.)
2. Turn South County “losers” into “winners.”
Make annual noise-abatement payments, sound-insulate homes or even buy back people’s homes, through programs that could be funded with El Toro airport user fees. I have suggested this concept for some time, and Rose Institute fellow Steven B. Frates explained the way a program might work in a recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece: Levying a $5 fee on 20 million air passengers a year at El Toro would raise $100 million; throw in freight fees, and there would be enough to pay the 2,000 homes closest to the airport $10,000 a year each. There would be lesser amounts for homes further away, and $40 million or so left to divvy up among South County cities.
The possibilities are almost endless. Creative thinker Tim Cooley suggests that somebody offer puts on South County homes. Maybe for $1,000 of their annual payment, homeowners near El Toro can buy an insurance plan that guarantees they will be made whole should the value of their homes decline.
Keep in mind, Orange County would get the base and the land under it for nothing,a gift that represents at least a couple of billion dollars that any other airport would have to finance. One would think that in the home of sub-prime loans and other creative financing, that sort of windfall could be engineered so that everyone comes away happy, even richer.
3. Make protections for South County residents ironclad.
Tell the FAA (better yet, get the FAA to stipulate) the airport will only happen with a night curfew and a ban on westerly takeoffs. And throw in a sweetener,absolutely no 747s. That won’t necessarily kill international flights,quieter 777s can fly direct almost anywhere in the world Orange Countians want to go. Will the county administration cringe at this unorthodox approach to airport planning? Maybe, but they’ll lump it because otherwise they won’t have an El Toro airport at all. Will the FAA or the airlines like it? No. But this is Orange County’s airport, not theirs, and if they’re told to take it or leave it, they’ll take it.
4. And, shrink the airport.
Reduce the fears of South County residents that they’ll wind up with an LAX or San Francisco International in their back yard. Throw out the 28 MAP (28 million air passengers a year) airport and propose a much smaller one, sufficient for the moment. How small? Supervisor Cynthia Coad has already signaled that she’d go to 18 MAP. Maybe it should go even smaller, all the way down to 8 MAP, same as John Wayne’s current ceiling. Or maybe something in between. In any case, shrink the airport, with the caveat that the rest of the land remain mothballed, for whatever OC’s aviation or other needs might be down the road. But leave it to a future set of politicians and citizens and another EIR process to tackle that need then.
Will these steps satisfy all opponents of the airport? Of course not. But the bet here is that it will win over enough doubters and fence-sitters, and persuade a good number of people in South County that not only would an airport be tolerable, but it would be in their enlightened self-interest to support it. These people might not tell their neighbors they feel that way, but they’ll express that sentiment in the privacy of the voting booth.
This program won’t produce the airport that you or I think would be best for Orange County. But it’s a big, creative, positive, conciliatory plan that’s worth a try if an El Toro airport is worth having.
