Developers Team Up With Paper to Steal Airport
ANN News-Spy Al wrote
us, "I thought you would want to see this front page article from
the Contra Costa Times. This supervisor, Mark DeSaulnier,
attended a recent meeting with concerned pilots regarding the new
oppressive lease that the county was attempting to foist upon the
hangar renters. He made the comment that, he had no intention to
close the airport and for the pilot community to stop worrying...
The members of the pilot community -- and there are some powerful
folks who fly out of Buchanan -- will be doing everything in their
power to see that his political career will end at the county
level. This blatant attempt to garner publicity for himself, for an
attempt to become a state assemblyman or senator, will backfire on
him.
"In the meantime I hope you can expose this politician, before
he pulls a Mayor Daley on us."
No fooling!
The article he cites, by Lisa Vorderbrueggen and Peter
Felsenfeld, says, "Supervisor Mark DeSaulnier envisions
transforming the county-owned Buchanan Field into a compact, or
smart-growth, mix of uses such as central library, museum, sports
stadium, parks, homes, shops, offices and transit."
In case you might think that's a bunch of editorial nonsense,
they quote DeSaulnier: "I've driven by Buchanan for years and asked
myself, 'Is a general aviation airport the highest and best use for
this land?'"
Hopefully, the paper's expose of the supervisor will have the
desired effect. The story continues, "The proposal to close the
57-year-old airfield drew swift opposition from business leaders,
pilots and federal aviation officials who view Buchanan as an
irreplaceable asset in a rapidly urbanizing community."
Yes; but is a municipality's contract worth anything, when
money's involved?
The FAA noted that the airport received a grant just last year;
as part of that acceptance, there are 19 more years that the
airport must stay open. Added to that, the reporters were told,
"The county also agreed to use the land permanently as an airport
when it accepted the surplus military property from the federal
government in 1946."
Donn Walker, the area's new FAA spokesman, told the
Times, "We need to open more airports, not close them, and
it's virtually impossible to site and build new airports in major
metropolitan areas like the Bay Area."
The Times would like to see the developers
win, though. The reporters say, "As a result [of the
opposition to ruining the airport], valuable public land that earns
the county less than $400,000 a year in airport taxes sits in the
heart of a county with a severe housing shortage and the longest
average commutes west of Texas."
The article concluded with one more dig at the 'unreasonable'
FAA: "Is it a nice piece of property and could you do a lot of neat
things? Sure," said Signature [Signature Properties, one of the
developers that wants to get its bulldozers over the runway]
President Jim Ghielmetti. "But having said that, closing an airport
is not easy."