History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Rhymes

The late radio commentator Paul Harvey described Vietnam as the war America was "ashamed to lose, but afraid to win."

The same could be said for Tweed-New Haven Regional Airport in its decades-long kerfuffle with the Town of East Haven.

Twice the town took the airport to court, twice the airport had the town on the financial ropes, and twice a deal came out of nowhere and was struck which not only rescued East Haven from defeat but gave them the lion's share of benefits while more responsibilities were placed on the airport.

It always seemed to be the airport making concessions, with little if any required from the town.

One could understand the setting for the two previous agreements (1983 and 2009) because both involved two New Haven mayors, Ben DiLieto and John De Stefano, who were no fans of the airport and sought to marginalize it as much as possible.

The current agreement, which was announced this past spring, did not, to the best of my knowledge, publicly involve New Haven mayor Justin Elicker. (While the city still owns the airport, its management is in the hands of the Avports firm, which manages several other airports in the U. S.).

In, "Won't Get Fooled Again," and, "Joe Carfora's Dangerous Game," I postulated that the next agreement would have East Haven mayor Joe Carfora dealing not with an airport-adverse New Haven mayor, but with a company focused on the bottom line. That should the town lose the challenge to the airport's Environmental Assessment in court (which they did in July), Carfora would have few if any cards to play in any negotiations.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Avports, for reasons which aren't exactly clear, agreed to submit any and all future airport development proposals to the town of East Haven, subject to approval by the town's Planning & Zoning Commission, the Inlands & Wetlands Commission, and any other local commissions the town wishes to include regarding airport development.

Here's the punchline: Avports didn't want to make that concession, but they did anyway. Why?

Did they think they were actually going to lose the EA case in court? And so what if they did? All it meant was they would have to go with an Environmental Impact Statement instead.

I dunno. Maybe Avports chairman Marc Ricks wanted to show East Haven that "hey, we're really a swell bunch o' guys who don't want to hurt anybody, so can we all just get along?" They even went so far as to lease building space in East Haven, which pleased Mayor Carfora, but nowhere near enough to change his stance.

I wish I could say this was just an isolated incident, but I've been following the airport saga for close to 60 years now, and the scenario never changes: The airport and/or the city concedes something to the town which, in turn, gives back next to nothing. "What's ours is ours, what's yours is negotiable."

Is it possible that every time the airport appears to be winning, some ex machina force comes out of left field to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with no time left on the clock?

I'm beginning to think NBA star Charles Barkley nailed it when he said, "If you try to get the people who don't like you to like you, the people who like you won't like you."

Or, as baseball Hall Of Famer Leo Durocher more accurately put it, "Nice guys finish last."