Palomar Airport: Supervisor Desmond’s PAAC Picks, 231

We will know soon whether newly elected San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond lives up to his campaign promises.

Test 1: Whom does he appoint to the 9-member Palomar Airport Advisory Committee (PAAC)? The PAAC is the monthly-meeting advisory committee that the Board of Supervisors has created to give the public a voice in how McClellan-Palomar Airport (Palomar) operates.

The past history of PAAC community friendliness is not pretty.

The Promise

During his campaign, community members met with Jim. We knew he has been a commercial pilot for many years and would be friendly to airport interests. No surprise. We made clear to him that he needed to recognize Palomar’s noise, traffic, and pollution impacts on 100,000 to 200,000 Carlsbad, Encinitas, Oceanside, San Marcos, and Vista residents within 7 minutes of Palomar flight operations.

He seemed agreeable. For instance, he said that if the FAA were directing Palomar pilots to deviate from the Voluntary Noise Abatement Program (VNAP) flight paths, he would set up meetings between the community and the FAA to see how VNAP compliance could be improved. Central to such meetings would be PAAC members supporting this approach.

Past PAAC Problems

Legitimately, the 9 PAAC members should include persons familiar with airport business and operations as well as members supporting community concerns. Well-rounded PAAC decisions should consider business, community, and passenger community interests.

But you don’t need to be Einstein to know that PAAC members voting on matters coming before them should not vote on matters that may benefit them. So what report card can we give the current PAAC members?

I and several Carlsbad residents have attended PAAC meetings (3rd Thursday of the month in the evening, usually at Carlsbad City Hall) for the last three years. Here is what we have seen:

1. Undisclosed Conflicts of Interests. When the PAAC acts on matters that affect PAAC member business interests, such members should disqualify themselves. Sometime they do not. At such times, community residents should point out the conflict and request that the PAAC member not vote. But the public has no idea when a conflict may exist unless the PAAC members fully disclose on the county website what their business interests related to Palomar Airport are. Current PAAC members have failed to provide such information even though several of them have close ties to airport users.
2. Failure to Respond to Public Comments. Attend the PAAC meetings. Speak your 3 minutes. Then 9 times out of 10 be ignored. As current PAAC member Cliff Kaiser recognized at several PAAC meetings, such a system is not consistent with obtaining the community input that the Board of Supervisors presumably wanted when it created the PAAC.
3. Ignoring Community Input in the PAAC Annual Report. Over the last three years, the public has raised many concerns at PAAC meetings that are not even mentioned in passing in the annual December PAAC report to the Board of Supervisors.

Some community comments would even benefit the airport, not the public. For instance – when the PAAC considered raising certain airport user fees – we noted that the airport had failed to raise certain fees for more than 20 years.

Doesn’t it make sense that an airport barely making ends meet – such as Palomar – would want to carefully study when rates should increase? Is it possible that PAAC members whose clients would be harmed by increased fees had no interest in discussing the issue in an open manner?

A Breath of Fresh Air or More Hot Air?

The list of offensive behavior of existing PAAC members is much longer. But you get the point.

As the newly elected Supervisor for District 5, Jim Desmond has the right to replace the existing PAAC members. We suggest he keep Cliff Kaiser (even though he voted in favor of expanding the airport) because he has expressed a sincere interest in substantially improving the communications between the county and the community.

Otherwise, a clean slate is in order. Jim could begin by appointing Shirley Anderson from Carlsbad who has attended many PAAC meetings and would well represent Carlsbad interests. The Carlsbad seat – surprisingly – has been empty for some time and Ms. Anderson has applied to fill it.