By Laura Silagi
March 25, 2014, at the Santa Monica City Council meeting on the Santa Monica Airport (SMO) both Councilman Mike Bonin and Senator Ted Lieu called for SMO to be closed.

Venice Neighborhood Council’s SMO representative spoke about the unfair treatment of the City of Santa Monica toward the citizens of Los Angeles, especially about the Santa Monica City’s “Fly Neighborly Program” that “Highly Recommends” prop planes, which burn leaded fuel, to turn south over Venice on take-off, and then east over Mar Vista, a policy that the FAA told us in a meeting, is solely a Santa Monica policy.

Santa Monica has also fought the FAA to keep the flight departure path of jets over Venice, sending noise and toxins down on us. The present Venice departure path intersects with LAX traffic over the ocean. These jets wait for a clearance to depart, a coordinated effort between LAX and SMO towers. Jets departing SMO frequently have to idle for quite a while during which time they spew toxins and noise into the neighbors east of the airport. (There have been studies by UCLA scientists about the huge increase in ultra-fine particles and black carbon from combusting jet fuel in that neighborhood.) If jets departed to the north (over Santa Monica) there would be no intersection of the flight path with LAX thus lessening the wait time for jets on the tarmac. Santa Monica continues to use Venice as a dumping ground for noise and toxins.

Despite these important issues, there is good news from the meeting. Here is a report from CASMAT, a Santa Monica group.

At City Council meeting the Council unanimously approved staff’s recommendations while modifying them to clarify Council’s intent, and while explicitly making clear that any land released from aviation uses would be used for low intensity uses such as a park. Recommendations included the following:

• Consider and comment on the information provided in this report and by members of the public.

• Continue to pursue City control of the use of its Airport land.

• Direct staff to begin positioning the City for possible closure of all or part of the Santa Monica Airport (“Airport”) after July 1, 2015, including, for instance, by preparing a preliminary conceptual plan for a smaller airport that excludes the Airport’s western parcel and by preparing preliminary work plans for environmental assessment.

• Direct staff to continue to identify and undertake efforts by which the City might reduce adverse impacts of Airport operations, such as zoning the Airport land to require uses compatible with surrounding uses.

• Direct staff to increase efforts to ensure that the use of Airport leaseholds is compatible with surrounding uses by, for instance, notifying flight schools that flight school leases will be conditioned or will not be renewed after July 1, 2015 and evaluating whether and how fuel sales should be prohibited or limited to curtail adverse environmental impacts. – This recommendation was changed by Council – see below.

• Revise leasing policies to maintain lease revenues so that the Airport does not again burden the General Fund by authorizing the City Manager to negotiate and execute five-year non-aviation leases with five 1-year options to renew for up to a total of ten years and one-year aviation leases with two 1-year options to renew for up to a total of three years with any renewals at the City’s sole discretion. – This recommendation what changed by Council – see below.

• Continue to receive and assess community input on preferences and possibilities for the potential future use of the land.

One key modification made by council included directing staff to repay the disputed grant assurance money (around $250,000) to the FAA, thereby ending the dispute over the end date of this agreement which the FAA contends extends to 2023 but which the City believes ends this year. This action also sends a clear message of intent regarding the airport’s future.

Another key modification was to direct staff to replace their suggested leasing policy with a standard City non-discriminatory policy designed for “light industrial and arts space”. This change, recommended by the airport commission, ensures the City cannot be sued for discrimination, while also putting in place a mechanism for disallowing uses incompatible with the surrounding neighborhoods particularly those that cause noise, pollution, or other negative impacts – exactly the kinds of things that current aviation activity represents. This leasing policy must be in place before any leases are renewed.

Thanks go to City staff, to all the Council members present, to the volunteers that continue to work so hard towards this goal, and to all the members of the public that stayed so long into the night and spoke so eloquently.

This is a big step forward towards a great park on airport land. We should all celebrate what happened last night, and though there is still a long path to tread, we will not stop until we have reached our goal.