Airport Advisory Board – October 2024

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Airport Advisory Board – October 2024

3:13
Good evening, everybody. It’s 6pm so I’m going to call our october 20/23, 2024, airport Advisory Board meeting to order Kayla, would you mind kicking us off and calling the roll chairperson, Harrison Earl Here. BOARD

3:32
MEMBER Paula salamatian.

3:35
Board member Steve ship here. Board Member Dan Easter.

3:42
You

3:46
Thank you. A little later tonight, given the date change, but appreciate everyone being here. We start our meeting as always, with the public invited to be heard. I have nine people who’ve signed up to speak on our list. Anyone who didn’t sign up will still be welcome to

4:02
reminder of the rules for public invited to be heard. You can start with your name and address, address comments to the board. You have five minutes to speak. And per the city’s rules, we cannot respond, and the city staff can’t respond to public comment directly, so five minutes to address up five minutes here city, city council is free.

4:23
So first person on my list is that, Tim Cook,

4:29
if you can kick off with your name and address, please,

4:36
yes, I’m Tim Cook, I live at 10741

4:39
north.

4:41
Gotcha. Tim Cook, I live at 10741,

4:44
north, 65th

4:45
I would really like someone to explain to me why my life has changed in the last year.

4:52
The amount of touch and go landing airplanes that are flying over my house. I just turned 65 I was hoping I.

5:00
To be at home and enjoy my life out in the country, and all I hear is airplane after airplane after airplane after airplane. It’s like I’m in a war zone.

5:12
They’re all the blue bottom airplanes,

5:16
and I’ve been told that they are from Jeffco. They’re a flight school that has gotten moved to our airport.

5:26
I’ve been there for 30 years on North 65th

5:29
I’ve never had to experience this.

5:33
And Could someone please tell me what I can do about this? I mean, it’s really driving me absolutely insane. It starts at six in the morning. I’m woke up by those airplanes, and it goes till 10 o’clock at night. Sometimes they’re back to back to back, sometimes they’re not there.

5:56
But our airport, I don’t think, was designed for an air school or intended for that.

6:04
I’m asking as a citizen of the area

6:08
for your help. I really I love airplanes. I have tons of my friends fly over there. I go over there. I fly with them in their plane. I don’t mind that touch and go landings is driving me insane.

6:23
I really, really hope that you’re listening to what I’m asking,

6:27
because it is really changed, and it’s just driving me insane. So if you could do something, anything, and help me out. I mean, if I sat here with a pencil and tapped it on the table and drove you guys crazy. That’s what it’s like. It’s just over and over and over and over.

6:49
It’s not right.

6:52
Could you please help I’m asking, I’m begging you

6:57
to help me. I don’t want to go insane. I want to live here. I want to enjoy life. I want the guys at the airport to fly their planes and have a good time. That’s but that flight school, touch and go landings, something has to change. And I have a number of friends that are here. I think they all express the same thing. Please. Please help me out. Thank you.

7:23
Thank you,

7:26
Louis. I

7:27
can’t remember how to pronounce your last name. I apologize. Thank you,

7:36
Louis. Beau, pray 1650 star dance circle, Longmont, Colorado, I’ll be a lot better now, now that I’ve done this before, my comments are really similar to this gentleman’s here. I’ve lived a Longmont for 2025, years. I don’t, just as a reminder to you all, I’ve repeated I had said some of this last time. I don’t have a gripe with air traffic, with pilots, recreational flying and so forth, but living, having chosen to live six miles away from the airport, paying appropriately for what I thought was a peaceful neighborhood,

8:12
I’m getting much more and more frustrated, I mean, with with the air traffic noise I was worked all day With the st Vern Valley School District today, got home about 330 had a cup of coffee and then went out just to put it in my yard, because they’ve turned off the sprinklers and so forth. In the 30 minutes I was outside, nine different flights flew over my home. Now, granted, one of those may have been a repeat a guy. I might have counted somebody twice or three times, but seven, even just seven flights over my home in a 30 minute period. I mean, like this gentleman just said, If a lawn mower ran around this building, around this conference room, 789, times in the next 30 minutes, I think most everybody in this room would ask, What the heck is going on? That’s how it feels to me. One of the members of this board at the last meeting said, Well, it sounds like music to me, and I’m offended that you would liken that to Harley Davidson, which I did. So I backed off, softened my comment, and said, Okay, let’s liken it to a lawn mower, which I think is what it feels like to me when I’m out of my garden, out of my back deck, trying to read, trying to have a glass of wine with my wife. It’s just offensive. I don’t understand why there’s so much traffic six miles away from the airport. Now, Melinda was kind enough just to show me a map, but

9:39
and I believe this is going to be the beginning of a longer term journey for me to better understand what’s going on. Maybe, maybe some of those answers will present themselves to me to my questions. But I don’t think it’s acceptable for the city of Longmont residents to have a continual flight of air traffic over our homes. I think it’s analogy.

10:00
To get into the lawnmowers circling our homes, as this gentleman said, from six in the morning until it gets dark and then even after dark. So I saw on the agenda that you’re talking about noise abatement tonight. I’m really interested in learning about that. Levi seemed really proud of the airport’s noise abatement program. So after the last meeting, I went home, looked it up, and I’ve got to tell you, was unbelievably underwhelmed. It looked like about four or five bullet points. It addressed, mildly addressed some of the touch and go flights that this gentleman talked about, and other immediate traffic to the airport. But it doesn’t address issues or concerns like I have relative to traffic over neighborhoods well away from the airport and around recreational areas as union reservoir and rabbit mountain, as I talked about last time. How much time do I have? About two minutes.

10:51
Oh, really, great. I won’t take it all.

10:54
So, yeah, I was underwhelmed. Sorry. Levi, with the noise abatement program, I don’t think it addressed traffic outside of the immediate area. I hope I can learn something tonight that makes me feel better, but I heard a great term years ago. Some of you may have heard it felt like a big, huge, nothing burger to me.

11:13
So hopefully I’m wrong, and there’s something more serious that the council can do, or the advisory board can do, relative to general aviation traffic throughout the broader community that interrupts people’s peaceful enjoyment of their home. That’s it. Thank you. Thank you.

11:31
Just further,

11:37
I will remind you, per the city rules, applause or out of order, as are other comments if you’re not the one speaking, also note for the record. Dan Meester joined us a few minutes ago. So Hi, Dan.

11:49
Next on the list is Christine Smith. Good

11:56
evening, everyone.

12:01
Christine Smith, 11178,

12:06
North 66th Street.

12:11
I wish you could get the visual.

12:14
I’ve lived in our home for 37 years.

12:19
I’ve witnessed

12:22
two airplane crashes

12:25
coming right at my house. Man, first one, oh my god. I had a brand new baby.

12:33
I was out in the back, kind of by the pool. My husband was off to the right, cutting the grass, and I said, Oh my God, that plane’s coming right here. Andy, and it was, it was

12:48
coming right for our house, and it just rained, and the sucker was coming. I go, go run and get the baby. I was thinking, I know if he’s gonna hit the house or the, you know, wherever.

13:02
Mm, at the last second that plane, it was so low and coming right as it turns to the left, right, and miraculously, somehow goes between the barbed wire fence and all the wires, the telephone wires, and oh, and the dude had his landing gear down, bam, and he hits that ground. Oh, that plane just rips off the landing gear, impales it in the ground.

13:33
And that sucker goes sliding across my neighbor’s pasture and wraps around a tree on the other side.

13:41
And, I mean, I, I was like, Oh, my God, my husband takes off running across there,

13:47
the pilot.

13:50
All of a sudden, you see a door opening up, and this gentleman gets out whatever, and he’s, oh, you know, you could tell he was in shock, yeah. Yeah, and,

14:04
and so that he gets out, and he pulls out this 16 year old kid, which was his buddy’s kid, who he was taking them up,

14:14
and they actually did, supposedly, he was going to do a stall or something. That’s another thing we got to talk about. First and foremost is safety, okay? And I’m going to tell you all right now,

14:26
it’s no different.

14:29
With people on the ground automobiles, there are some people that are great drivers, they have etiquette and they follow the rules. And then there’s some that are complete idiots, and you know exactly what I’m talking about. That also happens in the air. Okay? Everybody thinks because they’re pilots and blah blah, yeah,

14:52
there’s some classy pilots out there, but not enough, and I’ve certainly seen the mistakes they’ve made. So luckily.

15:00
See for that man and that young boy, they lived. They lived. But man, I thought I was gonna die and my baby girl, and I didn’t know what you know, and it was scary. Okay,

15:14
so

15:17
that was the first one,

15:19
the second one,

15:21
and it still affects me every time I go out there.

15:25
The second one

15:27
this, it was around the holidays. It was Thanksgiving,

15:33
because my my digs, my digs, are right at the end of that airport, pretty much. And every time somebody’s in trouble, the first thing they do is they turn that airplane around and they try to get back to the the airport. They gotta get back there so they can land it.

15:51
These guys, three of them, in the airplane. It was some old Piper. My husband knows exactly what the planes are and and who? Yeah,

16:03
they were. They were loaded up too much,

16:06
and that sucker wasn’t climbing the way it was supposed to climb.

16:10
And up there, boy, they’re coming there. You could hear the plane kind of straight, and we’re out there and looking. Here they go. They turn again, and now they go to land, because they weren’t making it back to the airport.

16:22
Neither was the first guy.

16:25
They turn they come down and they try to land in my neighbor’s field behind me, right by Saint rain road

16:33
comes down, hits the irrigation ditch, oh, oh, back that plane, just

16:41
Luckily for them, this was back when whites lived across the street over there. A guy was living in that house, an RN,

16:50
she comes out

16:53
to one of the guy gets out. One guy was hurt real bad. Now they can laying him in the road, and this R n comes out, and I know she saved his life. He was bleeding bad. He was in shock. She brings out her own blankets. This was before people cared about HIV and all the blood diseases that woman got in there and saved this man’s life. Miss Smith, I’m sorry your five minutes are expired. Oh, I’m just getting going.

17:17
I tell you what, your five minutes are expired. Thank you, yeah, well, I’m gonna sign up again,

17:24
Edward. Is that grief? I apologize if I’m missing it.

17:34
Tough one to follow.

17:37
My name is Edward Greif, and I live at 6024, same rain road here in Longmont. I’m not here to ask for the airport to close. I’m not at the airport. I understand the airport does some great things for this community. It provides jobs. It allows private citizens to fly their planes and enjoy flying. It also provides local businesses to use the airport. And lastly, it helps when we have emergencies, especially fires.

18:02
What I’m here to discuss is the noise coming from planes that do none of the things I just spoke about. I’ve lived here for eight years and have never had a problem with the airport. I’ve never considered filing a complaint.

18:15
Over the last six months, it has changed drastically. My question to you guys is, what happened? Our quality of life here in Longmont has really changed. We used to wake up in the morning to birds singing, but now we wake up to airports flying around in circles

18:31
pretty much every morning. This summer, the planes would start by 6am and it would be constant noise. There were even days it would start before 6am

18:43
on the airport website, it even states touch and go shouldn’t happen before 8am

18:49
and stop and goes. Are discouraged. I’m going to give you some examples of dates and times, and I just picked a few to share with you.

18:57
On September 18, at 6:44am

19:00
one plane had already done 11 circles over our community,

19:04
over the same homes. How is this noise abatement? The pilots, obviously, you know what they’re doing, and they seem to have no respect for the people on the ground.

19:14
Who wants to wake up to this noise every morning. Where’s the courtesy to our community?

19:20
Some planes that are flying in circles originate from Longmont, but a lot of a lot of them come from other areas, mainly Broomfield. Fly in circles, pollute our skies, make a lot of noise and leave How is that a benefit to our community?

19:35
How is it fair that four or five people fly around in circles and wake up 1000s that are on the ground.

19:42
100% on September 26 7:38am,

19:46
there were five planes circling the same pattern over the same houses, and some had already done seven or eight circles. When you have that many planes flying in the same pattern, it’s constant noise. We.

20:00
One right after the other, is this even a safe practice? I ask you,

20:05
if you had a neighbor starting a loud car, a motorcycle, a leaf blower at 6am every morning next to you, you’d probably go over and ask them to stop it. It’s common courtesy. That’s what I’m guessing. You agree with me, that’s what I’m asking for some common courtesy.

20:22
It’s even happening at night on 926 at 10:29pm,

20:26
one plane was still flying in circles over our community.

20:30
Yesterday morning, by 831 plane had already flown 17 circles over the same homes.

20:37
How is that being courtesies,

20:41
no respect for the people that live under these planes. How did this change so rapidly? How are we allowing this to happen? One plane flying 20 circles around our community? Sometimes it’s like living next to an international airport.

20:56
It’s constant airplane noise, and it really doesn’t have anything to do with the airport. The airport’s here to serve the community, not disrupt it.

21:07
It’s really a quality of life issue for me. Longmont is a small community, and we have an airport in the middle of a lot of homes.

21:15
For years, it hasn’t been a problem. When did Longmont become the training center of the front range.

21:22
It’s not fair to the Longmont community.

21:25
More houses and apartments are going up every day, and more people are going to be here complaining if this behavior continues. On the website, it says, and I quote, many can be avoided by using common sense and courtesy flying in continued circles over the city and outlining residential areas. What I’m asking for is the airport to follow the rules that you have set up and give us back our peace and quiet. Use the airport for what is meant for, and not for a few people who are ruining it.

21:54
A few questions I have, and hopefully we’ll get discussed later this meeting. Why are so few benefiting While so many citizens are suffering on the ground,

22:04
why? What have we done to address the noise complaints that have come in? How did we get to this place? Was allowing this behavior to begin even approved?

22:15
What could our next steps be? Thank you for listening.

22:19
Thank you.

22:21
Can I remind you that we applause or not in order here and we’ll move on to Keith Griffith.

22:39
My name is Keith Griffith, 7066,

22:41
Johnson circle in niwat. I operate a business at the Longmont airport.

22:46
And

22:50
the Planning Department

22:53
made an epic error back in December of 2020, and January of 2021,

22:58
they moved through the planning and zoning department and the city council with the modern West one development, and they did that without notifying the Mr. Attendant, I’m sorry, but I’ve been told that’s still quasi judicial and we’re not allowed to discuss it tonight, so it’s not a public hearing about that topic. If you’d like to have comments about something that’s not related specifically to that development you are welcome to. I think this made modern West one

23:27
coming back to it then,

23:30
okay, all right.

23:34
8809 Nelson road is a currently proposed development right next to modern West one. And I mentioned modern West one just to locate it, not to comment on it.

23:48
That development was not no notice was given to airport tenants, the people with whom have leases with the city of Longmont and to which the city has obligations. So by accident, I found out about that and commented on it. But we’re in a situation where the planning and zoning, or the planning department, is not using the common sense that developments that close to the airport have an impact on the entire community, on the airport. They can’t see that it would be logical to tell the people with whom the city has leases that there’s something going on there.

24:30
So this is a failure of the planning department to use their discretion. So what I suggest is that we remove that discretion by changing the development code to say if there’s a development proposal within the airport influence zone, you must notify all of the lease holders at the airport. That’s a very simple thing. It’s an email list and it’s two extra strokes on the keyboard, so not a big thing. I.

25:01
The conflicts that can happen when you don’t do that. We’re currently experiencing one where the FAA has declared incompatibility between some proposals, like modern West two and other ones in the area. So there’s a collision coming. The FAA is hard over in one direction, the city is obligated itself to do other things, and then you really should avoid these things by

25:30
involving the people who have the knowledge to give you the proper feedback on what’s compatible and what’s not. Thanks.

25:39
Thank you.

25:41
Chris Conklin,

25:45
or apologize if I missed a little bit there.

25:50
Chris Conklin, 234 Francis Street. I’m just going to dispel, dispel any notions that your planes are not allowed. I want you to listen to this.

26:03
If I can,

26:05
wait a minute, what’s good? Oh, wait a minute. Forget it. I don’t have an internet connection. Anyhow, I recorded some stuff coming over my house.

26:14
You know? What annoys me about this is that less than 1% of pile of population or pilots, and they can make everybody else’s life miserable. And again, I’m like the rest of the people that speaking here. I’m not against the airport. This has all happened in the last this summer, and

26:36
it’s all due to the, I think, to the training the pilots living in there, you know, the people learn training. And if the wind is out of the west, they’ll take off to the west. They’ll circle back over the city to land to the, you know, to the west. And if the wind’s out of the east, they’ll take off the east, circle over the city. I mean, I’m right off Third Avenue. I’m in old town.

27:00
It’s just seems to me, I think you pilots all have the law on your side. I honestly don’t know that the answer this is, because I, I think it’s a fact that you’re going to have to, you know, if we just be respectful and listen to the people that you’ve talked here tonight, that this thing is really, really, really annoying. I mean, are you gonna sit in my patio to have dinner at six o’clock at night? And it’s unbelievable. You can’t, you know, you can’t carry on a conversation for the planes flying over.

27:35
Everybody’s gonna be pissed off about planes, right? I think that’s general, it’s like. So what’s the answer? Maybe go to the place where it’s the least annoying, the least amount of people. And if it’s the training, if it’s the pilot school that’s doing this, maybe they need to move to a rural area out east somewhere. And, you know, annoy a few, a few less, a few, maybe a few farmers, and not us. But again, and I’ll reiterate, I don’t have anything against the airport. I you know, you want to fly to Oshkosh, Wisconsin to see the air show. Great. You want to fly to Mexico, great. But this thing, this touch and go thing, has really disrupted this city, and everybody that’s in here tonight is pretty much saying the same thing. So I really think it’s incumbent upon you to find out an answer for this, because this can’t continue. I mean, these people, this is not right for these people to be able to disrupt our lives like this.

28:35
Like I said, I don’t have the answer, but I would like your consideration to take this seriously and think about the citizens of this town. I mean, these things are flying right over the city and right one right after another.

28:51
Thank you.

28:53
Thank you.

28:58
JD, glitz, you

29:04
good evening. Board members,

29:07
J, D, glyte, 1632, Sherman way, Longmont,

29:13
I recommend that the airport advisory board bring to city council recommendation to amend the Longmont development code 15 to 40 to include all property owners and businesses on Vayne spanned airport as well as the FAA Airport Management Office.

29:31
If it could be managed, it should include users of the airport.

29:35
The current 15 240 paragraph E, item three, allows the director to expand the area if the proposed development may create community or regional impacts. The recent past has shown that is not being that is not being done

29:51
in the case of impacts on development in the airport influence zone.

29:56
Until this is accomplished, the council should be urged.

30:00
To stop any development in general alignment with the runways advanced brand,

30:06
they should also change zoning, as suggested in FA Advisory Circular 150, 51 990, 4b

30:14
covering the airport. Land use planning,

30:18
agriculture or open space would be the most compatible, high density obviously creates the greatest risk and noise objections the city

30:27
should contact the FAA to help fund open space purchases in this area as possible.

30:33
These changes would help keep the airport a viable assets for the community and ensure future FAA funding. The changes was also save money and help prevent future lawsuits.

30:45
And since I probably have a couple minutes, I feel for the people with the noise, and I can’t solve it, but I could. I know it’s baffling, and I think I have, like everybody else here too, it knows some of the reasons, and one of the major reasons is the airline pilot shortage and the fee, the wages are going way up. And again, people want to learn to fly, and want their kids to be able to get in that career. So lots of people are trying to learn to fly, and

31:18
all the airports are under this pressure of noise. Nobody is liking it, but so all the airports are under pressure to reduce it and to close,

31:29
and each one that gets limited or closed sends more people to the ones that are open. And so everybody in Longmont would like to see this stop, but if it stops here, they’re going to move to another one. And I’m not positive of this, but likely that’s what part of what is sending. There’s just a huge number, but part of them are being sent up here for those very reasons the other airports don’t want

31:56
Excuse me.

31:58
And then as far as the long days. And why would somebody be flying at six in the morning at 10 at night? The temperatures, you know, are cooler in the morning. It’s a

32:08
safer, better, better flying in the mornings. And you know, till the midday is the worst part of the day, and then people flying, their requirements are to have night flying. And so the instructor is trying to build time to get with the airlines, and they’re stacking it up, getting all this night flight done until 1010, o’clock, as you’re saying. I don’t know that, but I believe what’s been said, and they want to start early in the morning, and the and I do say these people get out there six miles. We know that is part of the noise abatement that they shouldn’t be extending as far as they do if they have to, because they’re, you know, new pilots, they won’t. But if an experienced pilot can slow the plane down and not go as far out as they go, they don’t need to go as far as wide. They don’t need it to go as long. It’s frustrating to all of us pilots to have to fly in that environment to see, you can’t even find them. They’re miles away from the airport. And in some you have to get in line with that, but you cannot. You don’t have to go full speed and make make it extend another mile out there. But anyway, I sympathize with that. I don’t have the solutions, but I do. Since I am a pilot. I do understand why it’s happening a little bit better than you might living in your home underneath it. Thank you. Thank you.

33:29
Jen Huff,

33:35
I’m Jen Huff. I live at 10619

33:38
north, 65th Street in Longmont.

33:42
So I’m one of the few that is trying to get out of here. I’ve tried to work with Levi and the FBO and the flight schools that are coming up from Jeffco and speak to some of these comments.

33:58
A lot of this was birthed out of the lawsuit Boulder County took Jeff COTA court. They’re not allowed to circle as much in Superior Boulder is obviously offline, because if you look at the adbs exchange at any given point in the day, we’re busier on Friday mornings in dia it’s kind of phenomenal. I don’t know why, but it’s pretty interesting to see.

34:25
Let’s see.

34:29
We do live when they do take off to the west, we live 150 feet above the airport, so as opposed to following the voluntary noise abatement plan and turning before the ridge, they have to keep climbing. And they don’t stop climbing. They go up the hill and they have to keep climbing. They go down our street, and they keep revving their motors until they head south. When they head south, they go over five schools.

35:00
Schools. They go over Silver Creek, they go over Altona, Eagle, crest, Flagstaff, as they bank around. So that’s just something to consider. And this is a lot of planes. This is sometimes they’re doing, like 26 laps at a time. Anyway, I am trying to sell my house. I had a buyer. She stood out there at 10 o’clock in the morning on February, in February, and she is a riding instructor. And she said, You know, I love your property. It’s perfect. I’m across street from my childhood friend. I want to come back from California. But she said, nobody could hear me in this riding arena with all this sound. And I was going to just play for you guys some of the sound that I hear, it’s, I can’t talk to people over it on the phone, and I work out of my house. So anyway, if, if anybody needs, like, if you’re gonna put up signs, my my brother flew F 18 is the Navy. He’s a captain for FedEx, and he now flies a little airplane. And he said there is nothing that he has read other than call Levi for the voluntary noise abatement information, and that’s in whatever is updated every 20 days. I don’t even know what that’s called, but that’s something to consider. You know. Get it out there. Let’s, let’s see if enforcing the 2011 voluntary noise abatement plan works. Might as well try it. Thanks. Thank you.

36:28
Ed ruskus,

36:35
ed ruskas, yes,

36:40
Ed,

36:47
good evening. Thank you so much. My name is Ed ruskus. I live at 9685 majestic road and long mile, which is down 95th Street before you get to now our road, you make a left. I’m living there. Since it was dirt in 92

37:02
there were so many things that was said a I am a Harley rider from the 70s. I still am, but just because somebody chooses to fly an airplane versus a mechanical operation on the ground doesn’t give them the right to ruin the sanctity of our homes. And I didn’t know what to say. You guys were all really good, but I had something I’ll read. I wrote. It got published in the Longmont times call years ago, and we’ll just go from there. And it’s really short. So I live in South Longmont, in Boulder County. I’ve lived here since January 1, 1993 the noise from the plains, the jumper used, and this is pre the touch and goes. So

37:40
it’s stacked up now, but this is an older one. It keeps it concise, because I don’t want to go off on a tangent. The noise in the planes that jumpers using the weekends is out of control. This past Sunday was the last straw. They buzzed my home every 20 minutes. There’s the advanced brand airport circle around my home again and again again after they start at 730 in the morning. And then when the weather got bad on a nice day, they were going till sunset. This cannot continue. They’ve ruined my Saturdays, Sundays, and this is when I worked. I’m retired now, so now with the touch and goes. You know, the sky jumpers are only on the weekends, mostly now, but the touch and goes, the planes, the training schools,

38:15
there are days when there’s not, especially on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, that there’s not a plane over my house, and

38:23
this cannot continue. They’ve ruined my settings. They have a right to be in business, but not to take away the sanctity of our homes. I do not live near the airport. I live five and a half miles out. What if I went to the owner’s home and flew a drone over it every 20 minutes? I’m sure the cops would be called for harassment. Why isn’t this considered harassment? This past Sunday, they were running two planes at once. It’s just unbelievable. How can they be allowed to do this? I’ve called and talked to the people who answer, who I will say, are very nice, but nothing ever changes. If my dog bucked excessively or my music was too loud, I rode my motorcycle up and down the street every 20 minutes while you were guys were trying to have dinner with your family. I’m sure the sheriff would be at my home. I don’t know what to do. I’m getting desperate. The long, long City Council doesn’t care. The airport manager, apparently doesn’t, because he had told me we would we should have dialog. Well, if we had dialog, I wouldn’t be writing to the paper, because I’ve talked to them that, you know, they’re Pro, pro aviation. So I

39:18
live my home almost 30 years the guy show up around 2007 I think, as a community, we need help. So that’s really much all I had to say. It’s just that, you know, we all pay taxes. You know, we all have,

39:31
you know, there’s, from what I understand, Longmont Vance brand doesn’t have fees for landing fees. I mean, you have fees when you go, when you park, your fees to do every transaction in the city. You have fees to go to the pool. Why don’t they have fees to use the airport? For Craig’s sake, it’s just ridiculous. Please

39:49
continue. Thank you. Thanks,

39:55
guys. I’m please. We’ve outlined the rules here. We’re trying to listen respectfully.

40:00
Appreciate it, if you would follow the

40:02
rules we have gotten through. Everyone who’s on the you’re not allowed to applaud, you’re not allowed to comment

40:17
back. I’ve gone through the list of everyone who has signed up to speak here.

40:22
Would anybody else who did not sign up in advance of the meeting like to speak at the first public invited

40:28
to be heard?

40:31
Go ahead. Please.

40:42
Chair. Chairman Earl,

40:45
members of the board, Scott store 229, Grant Street.

40:50
There was an effort to do this a little bit earlier,

40:54
just kind of give

41:02
you

41:05
Thompson Park

41:07
been there a lot longer than the airport. Has beautiful right?

41:13
People from the neighborhood get together play a little bit of bluegrass music. I

41:31
see what a difference it makes. That’s real. That’s old town, Longmont.

41:38
Help us.

41:42
I

41:48
um, the airport voluntary noise abatement program.

41:54
It

41:56
it’s there, please no applause. Okay.

42:02
Can I I’ll wait till she’s done with her phone call. Stop my time. I have stopped your time. We

42:20
Yes, does

42:24
everybody understand that we don’t applaud comments?

42:29
Thank you.

42:37
By the Chair.

42:42
Just a

42:52
gentleman, have a right to speak. Why is she on the

42:58
phone? If you want to continue, are we good? Okay? I argue that’s probably out of order as well

43:07
the voluntary noise abatement procedures. It’s voluntary. We all know that it’s only as good as you know people are willing to do, and it’s really made in an effort to be responsive to the concerns of our neighbors. I mean, that’s right in the procedure, I would hope that. And I haven’t spoken with Levi very much. I’m not sure I’ve spoken with Levi at all. I used to speak to the last airport manager, but

43:35
I’m not sure of the communications. I mean, do you guys get a monthly newsletter? Is there

43:43
signs at the airport that communicate the

43:49
voluntary procedures that we can do?

43:56
I’m sure we can at least, at the very least, communicate this to the pilots that are at the airport. And I don’t know how to communicate it to the pilots that are coming from other airports, but with the small community that aviation is, it would seem that this is not an insurmountable thing. So whether whether our airport manager is communicating with the

44:23
flight schools or the managers of the other airports, and we just got to have a better community here.

44:34
The airport’s not three miles away from town anymore. The airport’s right in town

44:39
because town has grown up to the airport. And let’s be honest, everybody’s going to say that, you know, the airport was here first. Actually, the town was here first, and the town built the airport.

44:54
If this was ever planned to be the big airport that we’re trying to make it to be, you.

45:00
We would have done what Fort Collins did. Fort Collins had an airport two miles away from town. They shut it down. They shut it down, and they went in with Loveland and bought 1000 acres in order to create an airport that wasn’t going to affect the city

45:19
in the in the manner they saw they saw it coming. So we’re asking the city to go buy land now and restrict the development of the city,

45:29
because the airport didn’t properly plan

45:33
back in the day.

45:36
It’s let’s return this airport to what it was. It was a hobby airport. It was great. And as people came into town, whether they moved in here for IBM, or whether they came for the bigger the jobs, they became part of the airport, the airport didn’t create the city.

45:55
The City created the airport. So how can we get to the point

46:02
where the airport serves the community without overwhelming the community. When we talk about landing fees, touch and go fees, what have you, and it’s really not touch and go fees, it’s an operational fee. It’s a landing fee, or something like that. What kind of revenue could we generate for the airport? So the airport is self sustaining, and we don’t have to take

46:25
FAA grant money and be obligated underneath the limit, within the limitations of the FAA grants,

46:35
there’s a better way forward for all of us. Let’s, let’s

46:41
take a step back. What’s going to be the best thing for us moving forward? And I guess one final thing is we’ve got a fire inspection going on. I would hope that,

46:53
you know, during this fire inspection, I’m sure that the manager is going through with fire marshal. I would imagine we’re going to discover the hangers that are being used for

47:05
storage of sports gear. What have you I think it’s been said by a member of this committee before that somebody had so much, so many toys in there that they were jealous, and

47:19
those should be recognized, because there’s an opportunity to get the appropriate land lease rate for non aviation storage. It’s cheaper to store an airplane

47:32
per square foot than it is to live in a mobile home in a trailer park. Thank you. Thank you,

47:44
ma’am. I know you were looking to do next, and anyone else who would like to certainly welcome to

47:53
Hi. My name is Marcy Roth, and I applied to actually be on the advisory board, but I do live in unincorporated Longmont for the last two years, so I’m probably not qualified, but I’d like to participate if I can. And I would like to say that I only got involved in this issue a couple of months ago, and everyone has been responding to me in a very respectful and thoughtful way. And I really, really appreciate that, and I would like to continue that. I think this is not easy problems there. It’s been going on for a really long time, and I am a problem solver. I’d like to find solutions. And so with that in mind, I just do want to say that I live off of 65th and

48:41
I also remodel homes for a living. So I work as far as Longmont estates. I have a property right now off of sunset, and it’s funny because there’s a train. I’ll just say this briefly. There’s a train that goes right behind this property, and I was afraid about purchasing it because of the sound, and I asked an older woman who lived there, I said, Does the train bother you? And she said, it’s nothing compared to the planes. And a lot of older people who’ve been here a really long time, longer than I really are consistently saying how much worse it got. I don’t think this is news to you, so I won’t belabor that. I think that if we all used decibel counters, we could prove that it’s definitely higher than 65 decibels, we are having trouble talking, or, in the case of this older woman, hearing herself think. And so I’d love to find solutions to it. And I do think that there is a place for maybe a hobby airport, and if there’s anything that can be done, I got a wonderful letter that was sent to the city of Longmont from an attorney’s office. I guess the city sought help with this matter, and the attorneys like, no, no, no and no, like, there’s nothing to be done. The FAA will come down on you. There were people who paid for these hangers that we’d have to reimburse. There are grants that we’d have to pay back. It’s.

50:00
Challenging. And so I get that, but there must be a way. And so I encourage you all to continue on your quest to finding the way the solution for the noise and the lead pollution.

50:13
And I would like to be a part of it, if possible. And I would like to just make sure that the community is heard. I did my best to try to get more people to come to this meeting tonight by posting it on Facebook and next door and that kind of a thing.

50:30
But I just want to say that when you talk to people in the community, whether it’s all the way out in Longmont estates or close to downtown, I did another home on Judson, and I live on more ag land. It’s all around and so it’s really is affecting a lot of people. And so I do think it’s incumbent upon us to find solutions, and I just encourage you to keep at it, and if I can be a part of that, I would like to be. So those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Applause.

51:10
Hello, I’m Joanne Burton, and I live at 713, Snowberry. So I’m shaking because I want to,

51:23
I want to say that we’re frustrated. We’re really disappointed. I have been to city council for years, and was the problem is getting worse this morning, 545 I think it was 530 I didn’t have a chance. It was definitely 545

51:44
the first plane. I don’t want to be woken up. I work at home, and I I’m a taxpayer. I own my home, and this isn’t it’s not fair, and I think I ditto everything that people have shared today. So just a couple of things. So this was in the Longmont reader,

52:07
may 6, 2022,

52:10
and I’m gonna point this to. They were interviewing Levi, and Levi was quoted as saying that back then, there was noticed increased activity at the facility. It has picked up over the last two years. It’s gotten worse.

52:33
And then he went on to say that noise complaints about airport, airport traffic is a perennial problem and can be usually mitigated through good communication between officials and nearby residents. So my question to you, Levi is, so how have you reached out to the nearby residents? I’ve never been contacted. The city council knows me, and what plans do you have to promote good communication? I’m a stakeholder, right? Is there a round table place that we can bring community stakeholders, not just pilots, not just the businesses, but the residents who live in the area and are affected. Maybe a newsletter. Also, Mayor Jones said

53:27
that there’s some creative things that they can do out there to mitigate the noise. This is in 2022 and that was in April. So what creative things are being done at the airport.

53:43
So a couple of other questions that we put together.

53:48
So Levi you said that there were 17 complaints in the annual report. What resolution has come from these complaints?

53:59
How is the voluntary noise abatement program communicated to pilots, is the airport moving towards financial sustainability to get away from the restrictive FAA grant money.

54:13
How can the airport have less of an impact on this growing community? So Levi you also said, one of the ways to deal with the noise, right is not to have development around the airport. And as Scott had said, right, the airport is part of the city now. Go to target. Go to King Soopers. It is, I’m I’m sometimes worried that a plane is going to crash over King Supers. It is crazy and all of the development that is happening. So why are we not worried about the safety of all of this development?

54:57
So what is the airport strategy?

55:00
So for dealing

55:02
with all of this increase conflict and all of the development. So those are just some of the questions that

55:12
I have. I’m frustrated, I’m disappointed. I’m sorry, Councilman Martin if you felt, but I think you’re hearing the frustration from our group, so I apologize that we didn’t follow the rules, but we want a voice in the airport.

55:33
Thank you.

55:35
Thank you. Applause,

55:46
Hi, I’m Margie Reed, Ogle. I live at 2635,

55:50
Mountain View. I’ve lived there almost 20 years. When we first moved to Longmont, we knew the planes and we were excited. Oh, there’s yellow wings. Oh, there’s Mr. Red. And over the last few years, especially, I would say the last five it has gotten so bad. And I echo what Tim said, It feels like we’re living in a war zone on many days, from early in the morning till the evening, non stop. You can’t walk outside without this constant drone, and then circlers, and then these planes that come over and they’re like,

56:30
it’s really bad, and it just, it just tears at one’s nerves. I’ve talked to neighbors about this. Everybody rolls their eyes because in the past, the city has been so unsupportive, and everybody believes, oh, there’s nothing that can be done. And that’s actually not true. There’s a lot that can be done. And one thing that could be done is that you could really make these points on abatement clear to the pilots. Maybe you could incentivize those. There are ways to make this a community project where the pilots really understand that they are now having a tremendously negative effect on this community. People are also telling me, like someone else mentioned, property values are starting to go down, and people are shopping and they’re going, Oh, I don’t want to live in Longmont. They’ve got this terrible plane problem, and I have heard that more recently than ever before. It’s a very big issue. But what I really also want to mention to you is that over the many years that I have been affected by the noise from the airplanes, it has been a difficult and frightening process to lodge a complaint. We have been afraid. I have been personally afraid to complain, because I have felt that the pilots would be vindictive towards us, and that’s true. Melinda,

57:56
it’s true.

57:58
So I have been afraid of that, and other people are afraid of that as well. Whether it’s true or not, it’s true that we are afraid of that, and we have some reason to believe that that could, could be the case.

58:12
But in any case, it has been difficult to lodge a complaint. You go online sometimes and it changes, and it’s like where it is changes, and the page that you’re supposed to go changes. Now tonight, we thought, well, let’s just give it a try. So we go online, we have a hard time finding where to lodge a complaint. We go to lodge a complaint, we click on it, and it goes to your shopping cart is empty.

58:37
So this is this is not good. You need to know what community is, is feeling. Maybe have a map, map your hot spots. There may be some hot spots that you’re not even aware of.

58:51
So I would really encourage you to to take a look at what’s going on with your complaint process, and how are you responding to it. No one responded to my last complaint, that was about a month ago.

59:06
I think that’s important in this dialog, that you actually know what and also make it available and make sure that your community knows where this complaint resource is. It’s important. Thank you.

59:21
Thank you.

59:24
Would anybody else like to speak? Our first pilot invited to be heard. Come on up.

59:32
My name is Rick basil here 229 Airport Road.

59:38
I have to agree with with Keith Griffith on the idea that that we, you and I and council, try to get ahead of this. We’ve seen here tonight. There’s there’s a lot of people that are concerned about the the stress of the noise, and they’re saying.

1:00:02
50 I’m sitting back there and I’m thinking, this is just about like a circular firing squad.

1:00:09
We’re not taking care of getting ahead of these developments in the airport influence zone,

1:00:18
and by that these sort of things are happening, and that’s that’s a that’s a shame, but I again to reiterate what Keith said. I think we need to get ahead of it and try to get some sort of an ordinance made that anything that goes on in the airport influence zone that all the stakeholders get notified.

1:00:41
The other thing

1:00:43
I agree with is what JD said about people coming in,

1:00:48
you’ll find that most of the traffic at long mine comes from

1:00:55
even Greeley, Greeley and Fort Collins, lowland, because

1:01:03
the schools that were really moved to Fort Collins, Loveland, Fort Collins level, and said, Okay, we’ll fix this. We’ll put in

1:01:11
a tower. Now, I’ve mentioned this to some of the other pilots out at the airport, and they like to choke me, but

1:01:21
that’s the answer to a lot of these people’s issues.

1:01:27
Have a tower. A tower is going to make sure that those people fly in an exact track, and that’s what’s going to slow them down. It’s going to send them someplace else, just like JD said. But

1:01:42
anyway, that may not be an answer to the problem, but that’s that’s why we’re getting it. It’s the

1:01:50
the traffic from Jeffco that has a tower, the traffic from Fort Collins level has a tower, and they’re coming here. Thank you very much your time. I appreciate what you guys do. Thank you.

1:02:06
Anybody else like to speak now?

1:02:09
You cannot come up again. I’m sorry. We do have a final public invited to be heard at the end, and you are welcome to speak again. Then,

1:02:17
all right, seeing no one, I’m going to close our first public invited to be heard. And moving down our agenda then is our approval of our September 2024, minutes.

1:02:28
Board members, anyone have changes corrections to the minutes? Otherwise, entertain a motion to approve the minutes.

1:02:38
Vice Chair Jordan, I saw no edits to the minutes. I move that we approve the minutes from our September 12 meeting,

1:02:49
my microphone moved and seconded, I’ll second. Okay. Any discussion. Anyone have anything else I saw?

1:02:57
All right, seeing none. Then all those in favor say, Aye. Aye. Any opposed motion carries. Minutes are approved. Information items. Update from the airport manager, Levi Hey, all right, I’ll go down the list here. First, I got a quick update for everybody.

1:03:14
I’ll go through these kind of topic at a time and pause for questions. Fire inspections are continuing to kind of go on out the airport. It was kind of my, initially, my idea that we’d be done by now, kind of in August. The fire department says they continue to get good responses from some of the stragglers. So we are continuing to to move forward with trying to get as much voluntary fire inspections as we possibly can. Now, when it reaches a point where we’re not getting any more voluntary, then we’ll, we’ll start sending out notices and notifying of, you know, showing up on the fire department and and doing those inspections. Otherwise, that’s kind of the plan moving forward at the moment.

1:03:52
But like I said, surprisingly good response on that fire inspections. I still, this morning, sending out some random emails to folks and getting positive response or getting that stuff cleaned up. So that’s really good. Any questions on fire inspections,

1:04:09
we did just five this morning, actually. Is it banner morning?

1:04:13
All right. Little information. Item on November 19, the airport is going to have a forum in front of the city council to kind of have issues heard and seen there. So that’s one of the reasons we want to make sure we had the airport Advisory Board meeting this week, just make sure that that news kind of got out prior to

1:04:32
that meeting, initially is going to be on the 29th of October. That’s why we had it on the 23rd this but then they push it back to the 19th, but we will be having kind of a an airport advisory or an airport city council meeting, if you will, on the 19th any questions on that? Is there an agenda for that discussion? Not to my knowledge? So the kind of the way that we’ve been preparing for that is prepping basic informational stuff on stuff that we know will be.

1:05:00
Topic, including noise abatement and leaded fuel and stuff like that, getting the basic information for city council. And then, kind of the way that’s moving forward is really, we’re trying to save as much of that for questions from the City Council as we possibly can, so we can kind of get their feeling on what they want to hear about and inform them as much as much as possible, is kind of the way that that’s moving forward. Mr. Meester on the 1119 meeting is the modern West two development still considered to be quasi legal and therefore not available for discussion. I’m pretty sure that both of those are, at the moment, still considered to be quasi legal. To my last being informed they were both considered quasi legal,

1:05:49
both of them, okay, yes,

1:05:53
if the intent of the meeting is to leave a lot of question time,

1:05:59
you know normally that city staff that’s responding to the questions, obviously you are the expert in appropriate is, does the airport Advisory Board have a role there as well to be able to,

1:06:08
you know, kind of participate back and forth, and council member Martin may be a question for you a little bit if that’s happened with other advisory boards

1:06:18
that that kind of discussion happens to. We

1:06:22
have had reports from advisors. Can you turn on your mic?

1:06:25
Thank you.

1:06:27
We’ve had reports from advisory boards. I am holding discussions about

1:06:33
with the city manager about what point should be brought up so I can raise that question with him and see if we can get something on the agenda. It. I think you guys should probably take a vote as to whether you would like to participate

1:06:49
before the end of this discussion, and then I’ll take it forward. Okay, thank you. Everybody here. Yeah, okay, okay, anything else on that item?

1:07:01
All right, I was going to mention that there was proposal for an annex of 809, Nelson road. So that was on my agenda for update today. So that just came out about a week and a half ago.

1:07:13
I would like to give props to the city planning department. They were very prompt on notifying me that time, and I put it in my notification for you guys. So things went really smoothly there, and we’re in the middle of having talks about that right now. To my understanding, the FAA has R already written a letter to regarding that proposed annexation.

1:07:33
Can you talk more broadly about development, or is it still on your list that’s I can talk certainly about that development process and procedure, not a specific development okay? So

1:07:46
when this particular piece of land came up for development, I when the application went in, I was notified right away. They asked me for comments right away, which I provided within that same day.

1:07:57
At that point,

1:07:59
best it’s honestly, it’s just in the very, very beginning phases where the applicant has just said, Hey, could we possibly do this? And my applicant, my comments are in and the FAA comments are already in on the project. So planning is definitely very clued into making sure that the comments from the airport and from the FAA are being front and center when stuff happens around the airport. It seems

1:08:25
my understanding was, it sounds like planning may have changed, not an ordinance, not a you know,

1:08:33
law, rule, whatever the appropriate word is there, but their SOPs to make sure that you’re better notified. They have, they’ve, they’ve changed things a little bit. So now, essentially, where before, there’s slightly less organized I’ve been told I essentially, I report to the higher ups in the planning department now so, and they’re also responsible for communicating with me. So there’s less of a chance of things getting lost on the lower end of things, it’s, it’s more of a supervisor to supervisor relationship now for just as you mentioned, SOP again, no regulations, no ordinances, none like that. Just heard the the for clarification and for operating ease, if you will.

1:09:18
Any questions comments on that from board members,

1:09:22
as I would ask Levi that, you know, since we’ve we were adding that noise abatement as a standing agenda item going forward, and I know you’ll talk about that in a second. I don’t want to preempt that, but I think development projects would be also good standing agenda item, just so that it’s a, you know, that that is serves as a public notification. Obviously, we’re not an approval body, but it just gets it out there. One other way for airport users, Council Member

1:09:49
Martin, yeah, I would just like to say that

1:09:54
I hope we’re working on for the for the council meeting. I hope everyone will attend.

1:10:01
Is about the problem of jurisdiction.

1:10:05
We’re as aware of you as you are about you know the change in the frequency of flights,

1:10:13
you know all of those things.

1:10:16
But

1:10:19
we need people need to understand that when you say you’re applying to the council, you’re applying to the advisory board. Neither of these organizations have any jurisdiction about planes in the air. And some of you I know know that, and have known that for a long time,

1:10:39
I think I wanted to tell everybody that the attorney that wrote that letter that’s been been going around, will also be there to answer questions at the November council meeting. So you know, be prepared

1:10:58
with your questions about why the city cannot enforce it,

1:11:04
because, after all, that is, is the disconnect and and, and the assumption that everybody’s making that, you know, just

1:11:16
there’s a misunderstanding there, because we can’t, you know, launch a police plane and and force a noise maker to the ground the way you can, you know, have a squad car pull, pull someone over that’s got a loud muff. Difference in jurisdiction, only the FAA can do things like that. And they, of course, they’re not going to do that either, but they can pull some a license for a plane or a pilot, and only the FAA can do that, so maybe you need to apply to that organization. Thanks.

1:11:54
Use that as transition into noise abatement procedure. I have a few more updates,

1:11:59
and we certainly would. No it’s certainly right. I just want to update everybody real quick on the CIP meetings. I see CIP meetings occurred. We did them last week here.

1:12:10
Nothing has changed from previous discussions that we’ve had about projects going on at the airport. One big change, I guess, just to notify the board about we’ve had on the CIP for the last several years. We need to do a rehab on the tax. We’ll be calling at the south taxiway Alpha. It’s the asphalt parts of the taxiways for the zoo. Who familiar with it.

1:12:33
We did a re evaluation on that with engineers, came out and walked into some sampling, and it’s looking like that’s going to be a much larger project than we thought it was. Unfortunately for rehabbing that it’s probably going to be, we’re probably going to take it up and put it down new again. So that’s going to be probably a two phase project. Now, in 2025 and 2026 or initially it was supposed to be a 2025 project.

1:12:57
So that’s kind of the only thing that’s changed recently, as far as projects go on the airport, I will use that to loop in at the same time the projects that we’ve already got going forward this year, the completion of the wildlife fence and the pavement rehab on the ramp, wildlife fence has been awarded to the contractor. Really, all we’re waiting now on them is for them to get their materials together they start putting the fence in. That will be a quick little project. Quick little project. It’s not too much fence to complete

1:13:26
the pavement rehab on the main ramp. We did the opening bid walk through this morning. Excuse me if I called it the wrong thing, but we had the people coming out to bid on that that work, and walked the airport this morning and looked at what it would be. So that’s moving forward. Also, we’ll be accepting bids for that, and then they’ll go through the the method of picking and awarding, and then that work will most likely begin next spring.

1:13:59
That’s there’s still potential. If you know the contractor wants to do it this winter, they can, but my guts telling me that they’re probably going to push that off till spring, just with the nature of the work that’s going to occur. Any questions on airport projects?

1:14:17
Okay,

1:14:21
actually, I’m sorry, go ahead. You know the question I’m going to ask you, which one drainage study? Yes, that’s my last thing. Thank you. All right, so drainage study has been one of those things that’s been hanging out there for a while now. Initially, it was supposed to be done in July, and they’ve kind of been saying, oh, any moment. Any money moment today. So I actually set up a meeting with them to ask them, hey, what in the world is going on with this? It turns out the engineers with the city and the engineers with the buyers, there are contractors where they had were kind of butting heads a little bit on what they wanted that report to look like. So IR said, hey, the comments that your city engineers came back were just way more than we thought they were going to be. The.

1:15:00
Is why it’s taking so much longer to wrap this report up. So I had this meeting Monday morning, by the

1:15:06
way, but we set up another meeting, we hashed out with the city engineers, and we have a new promised deadline, drum roll please, of the end of October, and that is supposed to be complete. Complete.

1:15:19
That report, of course, is not official yet. The I also asked them at the same time, Hey, can I safely say that prior to, you know, any more building that we were probably going to be required to build additional retention ponds on the airport? And they did say yes, that will be required, most likely, a recommended requirement, prior to approving further construction on the south side of the airport. I don’t have the official report, but they did tell me that it was safe to say that

1:15:47
thank you for the that is my last item on updates, and I can certainly move into noise abatement program if everyone is ready. I think for the drainage, sorry, and I’m go for I keep going to this because I it ties into future development in the airport and revenue and everything else. I know it’s going to be really tight, but I think it would be beneficial to have be prepared to speak about it at that 1119, meeting, to the extent absolutely just for kind of what you know, what we know, the enabling projects need to be, development, I am development on airport, I’m confident will be a question and a topic, and if not, it should be hopefully, hopefully I’ll have that report in hand, although I’ve been disappointed by our contractors in the past, but

1:16:31
hopefully the report will be in hand.

1:16:35
All right, any other questions on that? All right?

1:16:40
Vance brown noise abatement program. Just quick update

1:16:44
this month, as you as we talked about last month, we’re going to make sure that we’re addressing this in some kind of a form, at least every month to make sure that we’re on, you know, as a public venue venue form to make sure that we’re having continued dialog with it. Just a quick update this month. Last time I mentioned that we had some we were someone very nice in the community, wrote up an excellent noise abatement little summary for us. It was a task I was working on, but I must admit she she must do this for a living, because it was wonderful. I had it posted at the FBO. I’m kind of happy to report back that that document has had some positive comments back from the FBO, so that’s great. I laminate them so they’re really nice. So much to the point that we’re going ahead and I got tentative permission I’m making some nice, big posters of it, and we’re going to see if we can get that up the FBO too, just as a little bit of additional information for noise abatement program, some other things I can touch base on real quick about that, since there have been concern over it, we do do monthly

1:17:49
informational flyer slash emails, if you will, to the airport community. Those always include airport noise abatement information also. And we also do meetings with local flight schools and businesses. Our last one was about a month ago. Now, we met with aerosphere, mccare aviation, some of the bigger uses of the airport, and talked about various issues, including noise abatement also. So just touching on a few tenants of the noise abatement program, there for sake of you know information, any additional questions on noise abatement program?

1:18:26
All right, sorry, go ahead, I missed you. There is there any way to limit,

1:18:35
you know, like three touch and goes maximum, three touch and goes So speaking of touch and goes specifically, I would kind of fall back on the letter that Eric Pils wrote the aviation lawyer that was contracted essentially, No, there’s not. It would be considered

1:18:56
discrimination and restriction of protected aeronautical activity, and that would be against federal rules.

1:19:04
So

1:19:06
is it against the law to put a sign up suggesting

1:19:13
there’s not a, you know, like at the warm up area on each side, on in, on the airfield itself, then we would have, of course, be considered, you know, considered a rules and regulations concerning airport signage and stuff like that. One of the things that’s come up in the past, and I’m certainly will be discussed moving forward too, is something that we did at Rocky Mountain metropolitan which was essentially utilizing, you know, putting signage of the noise abatement program on more conspicuous areas. And noise at Rocky Mountain metropolitan airport. They put it on the entrance of the man gates on the airfield. For example, they had a little bolted point list of the noise abatement program that they did. Yeah, okay,

1:19:53
Mr. Meester,

1:19:55
I guess this is directly for Levi. This.

1:20:00
The first I’ve seen these things, but that’s not a big deal. They’re very easy to follow, yeah, but most pilots will get their information from the airport. Description. Is there any intent to get these procedures, even though they’re suggested and voluntary in the airport? Are you talking about the FAA manual? The

1:20:22
it’s a airport facility directory. What’s exactly now? Yeah, it’s still called that. Yeah, it’s, they are officially, oh, chart supplement. Thank you. They’ve officially changed the name to chart supplement. Yes, actually, to the extent that it can be, I have done that. It’s, it says in there, there are noise abatement procedures. Can’t, you know, reach out to the airport for that. So that’s what they’ll essentially let us do. Okay, yep,

1:20:48
and I know you said you met with some of the flight schools. Are you meeting with the flight schools at other regional airports as well? We did, and we hit in that meeting. Our number one was mccare aviation. They have the highest by volume, if you will, flight. So they, we loop them in aerosphere. Of course, there’s always going to be more continuing as we move forward with those. Yeah, I think, I think when we’re doing the updates, and I think the one sheet is great, and making it more visible at the airport, and having, you know, kind of more conspicuous signage will be really helpful. I like that. It’s at the FBO. And yeah, thank you so much to the individual community that did this for us. I would use her name, but I haven’t asked her permission to use her name, so I won’t actually do that without her permission. No, it’s, it’s really helpful and a nice tool to have to communicate with folks. Yeah, I would hope that when we have the discussions here, you know, on a monthly basis, as you continue some of the meetings with other flight schools and, you know, other airports in the region, that you kind of bring that back as part of the update for us. Yes, so it’s, it’s out there, and we’re well aware of it. Vice Chair Jordan

1:22:00
would

1:22:02
it, be possible to add it to the awas along with the sky diving warning? We could potentially do a blurb that there is a noise abatement program where we’ll have to be careful about that one, because we won’t want to be creating a situation where we’re going to start getting flack from the FA for, let’s say, having a way too long, right? This would be just like an advisory that having advice, there’s potential to that. I could certainly check into that to make sure that it would be kosher. For those who don’t know. Awas is basically the automated weather system that reads out the weather over the radio or over the phone. And I can’t for life. Me remember the acronym, but automated water observation system. Thank you.

1:22:46
With all the other acronyms, right?

1:22:50
Any other board member questions, comments,

1:22:55
I know he’s did you have anything else on noise Bateman tonight? I did not all right, I actually had one other one, and I apologize. I should have said this before. One of the comments this evening noted that the complaint form was broken on the website.

1:23:11
I went over the website while the comment was going on, and it is indeed broken. I assume that’s related to the New City website that’s broken a lot of links, but

1:23:21
can we get that fixed ASAP? Absolutely, I actually forwarded an email this morning regarding that too, and I also tried it and was busted. So I’m in the middle of trying to get the city to tell me who fixes that. So it does look like that that happened when they made the transition to the new city format, which I want to say happened probably about three weeks ago or so, or four weeks or a month ago, something like that.

1:23:50
All right. Well, thank you. I’m that’s frustrating but understandable. I would also just say, you know the airport’s phone number is still on that website

1:23:59
to reach Levi. I’m sure your email address is somewhere on here too, that I’m just not seeing off the top of my head. But

1:24:06
council member Martin, yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair, I just would like to say

1:24:13
first of all to apologize to the public for the number of broken links on the city website, because there really is an excuse for it. The explanation, not excuse, is that an automated procedure was used to convert from the old format to the new format, and then the quality assurance process that they used to make sure to test that automated conversion was inadequate and understaffed. I’m escalating that through the IT management, but that’s a work in process too. Yeah, that’s something else that I kind of slipped up onto. Because when I reviewed the website, I kind of tried to go through the motions of, oh, what would somebody did that? And I went to the complaint form, and it looked like it was.

1:25:00
Fine. It says, oh, here, pick this that the problem was, when you get to the end, it doesn’t let you go forward, yeah? So it acts like it’s gonna let you file a complaint, but then it doesn’t actually, yeah, yeah. Quality Assurance is a hard job. Yeah.

1:25:12
I appreciate and I apologize. I can’t remember who made the comment, but whoever made that comment, thank you for bringing it up and making sure that gets fixed. So thanks, Levi. Yeah, I

1:25:26
guess I kind of already talked about the city council study session prep,

1:25:31
and so that’s kind of what I have for information items then

1:25:35
on the study session prep, since council member Martin suggested it, I would suggest a motion that you know, the board requests to be able to engage in the discussion with council.

1:25:49
Probably nominate chair and or vice chair to you know, be the primary folks in that discussion, but open to suggestions from the board, if what you guys think about that.

1:26:02
Sounds like a good idea.

1:26:05
Would anyone like, I mean, I kind of unofficially made a motion there. Would anyone like to second that motion? All right, moved and seconded vice chair over the second, but he’s 4r, d, all right, thank you. We’ve got double seconds. Yes comments on that motion?

1:26:20
All in favor. Motion say, Aye, Aye. Any opposed? Okay,

1:26:27
thank you for the suggestion.

1:26:30
All right,

1:26:32
no more information. Items. Vice Chair Jordan, just to clarify so the 29th is off and it’s yes the night, okay, the November 29 of October is yes, okay, thank you.

1:26:47
And we have a board meeting between now and then. Yes, I remember we do actually. So in retrospect, we could have also talked about it then. But so our next board meeting,

1:26:59
it’s not a mic, however, for some reason. But yes, it should be scheduled on

1:27:03
the 14th. Okay, second Thursday, it is the second Thursday, it should be on the 14th. So we’ll have, we’ll be able to meet right before that as well. Okay, okay. Leyva, anything else? That’s all I had for information items. Okay? And we have no action items tonight, so we move on to our final public invited to be heard. There’s no sign up for our final public invited to be heard. Same rules apply as before. Whoever would like to come up and speak, you are very welcome to

1:27:44
Levi, can you turn on the microphone? Oh, sorry,

1:27:47
I got it. Mike on and off. Thank you. Fourth grade was hard for me. I appreciate coming. But I just have a couple questions after Can I start with your name and address? My name is Ed ruskus. I live at 9685 majestic Road in Longmont, which is down 95th Street, before you get to Niagara Road, make a left

1:28:06
Levi is paid by the citizens of

1:28:11
Longmont.

1:28:13
Just help me out, and you guys are paid like who’s paying for all this? So who pays the taxes? Since it’s not a church on on the airport, just getting to something. So all of this cost, of the people coming, going, the transportation, in and out, the maintenance, the drainage, all of that. But yet we don’t, we don’t have a say on the comings and goings, like, how many touch and goes can you do? Who’s there? How many planes are there? How many flight schools are there? That’s it seems crazy to us. That’s all I wanted to say. If the list, I didn’t have that on my agenda. But after hearing all of this, you know, we’re spending the money, we should have some say. You should have some say on what happens there for all of us. That’s all thanks. I appreciate it. Thank you.

1:29:06
Yeah. JD go lights again, 1632, Sherman way I just just after what’s been said, and I just like to circle back to a couple of our

1:29:18
requests to move forward on getting an amendment to the Longmont development code for notification expanding that I’d like the SOP. I’m glad it’s working, but it’s if it’s working so well, just put it in writing, and it’s going to take some kind of a agenda item or motion at city council. And I’m not what I was hearing of this meeting. It’ll be great. It’ll be good to clarify and a little bit of community exchange. But I’m not feeling very warm and fuzzy that that actually is going to have a discussion and get that started, and we do need to have this notification so that we don’t get in this trouble.

1:30:00
In. And if

1:30:03
it’s going to be long delayed, we should be

1:30:06
just

1:30:08
the word in, right? But delay just

1:30:11
had a better word for it, but just making sure there’s no development, anything action in that area of the general center lines of the runway until we get a better process.

1:30:24
Thank you. I

1:30:28
just was going to ask a quick question. Jen Huff, 10619, north, 65th Street.

1:30:35
Just a quick question, because when my brother mentioned that the noise abatement plan wasn’t posted anywhere. It does list Levi’s phone number. But shouldn’t it be the FBO, since he doesn’t really pick up his phone, or do you just check voicemail? You can’t I’m sorry. Oh, I’m sorry. No, no, you’re so I guess my question would be, since the FBO picks up. Would it make sense to list them as the contact

1:31:04
and I have actually been targeted by airplanes after reaching out to flight schools and Levi warned me I would be.

1:31:16
Thank you. Applause.

1:31:20
Uh,

1:31:24
Louis bopre At 1650 star dance circle here in Longmont. And again, thank you. I assume that this is a volunteer board, and I appreciate the work. I know it’s always thankless.

1:31:35
I just really Harrison wanted to say thank you to you for your patient education, to me about chamber protocols.

1:31:43
This is the second meeting I’ve ever been to. I’ve never been to a chamber meeting. So I appreciated your patient education as to no clapping and vocalizations and so forth. Marcia, I did not appreciate your very blunt, abrupt and what I thought was rude and disruptive comments. I thought it was aggressive and wholeheartedly unnecessary, for what it’s worth.

1:32:06
Again, guy like me, he’s never been to a meeting like this. Harrison styles, really appreciated yours. Not so much. I did learn something from you, though, however, which is, I guess, continuation of what I learned at my first meeting a month ago, which is there’s limits to what city council can do, what the board can do, relative to a lot of the complaints that have been

1:32:27
shared. I’m going to keep coming to these meetings, maybe to the chamber or to the council meeting if the public is invited to learn more about that. Because if there’s nothing we can do, there’s nothing we can do, I won’t waste my time. I won’t waste yours. But it seems like that’s giving up pretty quickly. If the if the solution is moving the airport, like somebody suggested has been done in Loveland and Fort Collins, then maybe that’s the direction I and others need to pursue. So thank you again for allowing me to speak tonight. I’ll see you again next month and thereafter, until I’m satisfied that something can be done or should be done, or what have you. Because, yeah, I mean, this is a pretty clear indication there’s a big part of the public that’s not happy with the continuous noise of the airplanes, which are a real minority in the community, affecting the strong majority. Thanks again. Thank you. Applause.

1:33:20
Oh.

1:33:25
Tim Cook again at North 610741,

1:33:29
north, 6/5, street. Sitting up there, I watched all you guys. Listen to us. I appreciate listen to us all. Every time someone came up, I could see on certain people’s faces, you’re cringing. Not another person, another person, another person, another person.

1:33:46
I heard someone say I had heard enough.

1:33:51
You guys are only here for a few minutes tonight listening to us. We listen to these airplanes, day in and day out, over and over and over, and there’s nothing we can do.

1:34:04
I know you guys all wish we went away and we weren’t here tonight complaining. I don’t want to be here complaining. I want to be a friend of the airport. I want to be a friend of this city, but they’re ruining my life. It’s not fair.

1:34:20
It’s just not fair.

1:34:23
If you’re not in the area and you’re not affected, you probably don’t care.

1:34:29
I don’t know,

1:34:30
but I live here. I want to live here. I want to be a friend of everybody.

1:34:37
It’s not fair that someone’s ruining my life so they can learn to fly an airplane. It’s not it’s just not fair.

1:34:46
Thank you.

1:34:57
Really. Quick follow up. Marci Roth chance acres.

1:35:00
In Longmont.

1:35:02
I know you can’t answer this right now, but maybe there’s another vehicle for communicating with us. But Bree attended a meeting I went to who has worked at several different airports, and she mentioned that if we took measurements of the decibel level levels and we submitted them and showed that they were, in fact, higher than 65 I hope I’m correct with my numbers, that maybe that could have an influence on the FAA. So I guess if there are any ways that you can identify or help us identify, if we all got the little app on our phone that she gave me a scan for that was able to measure the decibels, and we were then able to submit group data for that without it costing a lot for the airport to put this in. I wonder if that’s the solution. We’d love to hear any solutions or anything that you suggest for us to do that would meaningfully, perhaps make a difference. And I definitely heard what you said, Marsh, and it’s very challenging to just say, oh, there’s nothing at all we can do. It’s, it’s, it’s hard to hear. So I’m still looking for solutions. So do let us know, in whatever way you communicate with us, we’d love to hear action items that we could do to make a difference. Thank you. Thank you. Applause.

1:36:25
Again, 6024, st frame, just question if we can, at some point get an answer on why things changed so drastically over the last six months. We never had this problem before, and now we have a huge problem. And the question is, what changed? And I don’t know if you can ever give us an answer on that, but it’d be nice if we could find out what really happened here. Thank you. Thank you.

1:37:02
Yes, guess

1:37:04
I’m back. Hi. Christine Smith, 11178,

1:37:09
north, 66th Street.

1:37:12
Levi nice to get a visual on you.

1:37:17
I hope we can work this out.

1:37:20
It’s real emotional for me to even get up here and talk, yeah,

1:37:26
and I’m sorry that we’re all in this predicament. Because I think, over the years, it didn’t seem to be too bad, but now it’s gotten out of hand. Do I got the five minute rule again? Because I’m going to clock myself? Yeah, because it’s, I think, I thought five minutes was way longer than what it was before, yeah.

1:37:48
So let’s talk about the noise. I guess that’s right, the whole combination of,

1:37:55
I live at the end.

1:37:58
I call it the end of the runway because they all seemed to come over that direction,

1:38:04
and

1:38:06
literally this spring, out in my gardens

1:38:11
or out feeding the animals and such, the traffic was so bad, it’s like they weren’t even giving themselves a minute on The runways to one plane after another when they come over, it’s, I mean, it was literally vibrating right?

1:38:29
And

1:38:32
so loud that, I mean, I had to go in the house. It’s bad, real bad.

1:38:38
So when I came to the meeting before the other meeting, actually asked a pilot why it was so bad,

1:38:46
Ron krenzel,

1:38:49
and he said, Yeah, you know Ron,

1:38:52
right.

1:38:54
The reason is because all three airports, which I guess we’d always call that the Broomfield airport, I think you’re calling it the metro. It was down in Broomfield. Yeah, Rocky Mountain. Rocky Mountain airport.

1:39:07
Erie and Loveland all put a stop

1:39:13
to any students doing touching goes at their airports, and they said, so go along mine, because they don’t really have any rules, and we never have. I mean, I don’t think we thought we needed rules.

1:39:26
You always want to believe that people are going to be respectful

1:39:31
when they’re flying planes or driving cars, or you guys mentioned Harley motorcycles. I’ll tell you one thing. There was that I used to call it the Harley plane, and it was beautiful. And this guy was a phenomenal pilot.

1:39:47
And I think, since he must have passed away, because the plane doesn’t, I don’t see it going over anymore.

1:39:53
But the reason that

1:39:56
all the schools have come here to get their students training again.

1:40:00
We need more pilots to fly the big planes.

1:40:03
That’s why, that’s why it’s increased. But we still don’t have any rules. Or it’s like all bets off with whatever these pilots students, it’s actually the instructors, is what he said, that are letting these students do what they do up there,

1:40:23
but it has certainly gotten ridiculous.

1:40:28
And so somehow, with the getting on board with the FAA,

1:40:34
we need to, we need to remedy this situation. And all I have to say,

1:40:42
because it’s no different. It’s, you know, and I hate to think that we would outgrow areas, but we’ve done it. The same with the C max plant in lions. Now it was the same with Rocky Mountain.

1:41:02
What? Um, down there the uranium guys down in Jefferson County, there’s always they, they built that way back in the day,

1:41:11
uh, thinking it wasn’t, people weren’t going to be affected Stapleton airport. No, that’s why we now. We have dia

1:41:20
same with this. It’s kind of, it’s outgrown,

1:41:25
or the area has built up around it,

1:41:29
where it’s there needs to be some rules. There needs to be something in play where these pilots and students cannot just fly and and

1:41:39
a lot of these planes. Actually, I was told our old 1950s they got straight pipes on them. I mean, they’re loud. Yeah, they’re, you know, so the planes should be modified to not make so much noise and vibrate when they’re flying low and going overhead,

1:42:00
one after the other. They’re all older planes,

1:42:04
so that’s, you know, they need mufflers. They have no mufflers. So that’s part of it, right there.

1:42:12
Hmm, how many you’re right at five minutes, all right. Well, I was trying to follow it right in line, right there. So thank you. Good night. Thank you for your time. We’ll figure it out.

1:42:26
Does anyone else want to speak? Our final public invited to be

1:42:33
heard. All right, seeing no one, I’m going to go ahead and close that for the night, and we move on to board, Council and or staff comments,

1:42:43
board members. I’m going to use chairs prerogative and kick off with some comments, if that’s okay, because I want to respond to a few things that were was said tonight.

1:42:53
One, I really just want to say this, you know, empathy, you know, in intentionally. And I’m sorry a few folks left, but we do want you here, and we do want these comments to be heard. We really do. We are all volunteers here. We are appointed by the city council to advise them on airport issues. The way we understand the issues in the community is by hearing comments from the public. We really do appreciate hearing them. You see us up here taking notes and taking this very seriously. It’s also true, there’s not a whole lot that we as an advisory board can do in the context of the powers of an advisory board. Means we suggest actions to counsel, and counsel is a little bit hamstrung under federal regulations, things like publicizing the voluntary noise abatement procedures, better putting up better signage, talking to the flight schools, are all things that we can do.

1:43:49
There are probably other creative things that can be done. It probably won’t go as far as some people would like us

1:43:57
to. It’s not that we don’t understand the concerns. It’s that there’s only so much that is possible there

1:44:04
for the comments around kind of cost of the airport to taxpayers. The airport is an enterprise fund of the city, meaning it is intended to be self sustaining. It does not directly receive city funding

1:44:18
in its budget for a meeting like tonight. Again, we’re all volunteers. Levi’s time goes back to the city. Kayla’s time as our recording secretary actually bills back to us in an administrative transfer fee from the city, when the city attorney, when the accountants, it all comes back to the airport’s budget, which is paid for largely by rents revenues. And there are federal and state grants that go into projects at the airport. So yes, there are taxpayer funds. It’s largely federal and state. It’s not coming from the city.

1:44:52
I don’t know the answer to the question about measuring decibel levels separately. It is done as part of the airport’s master plan. I.

1:45:00
The last airport master plan was 2012 I want to say there is a map showing it in there. I There is discussion of doing a master plan in the next couple years, which would probably include that.

1:45:14
But I don’t have a better answer, so I apologize I can’t answer that question directly,

1:45:18
but I’m going to let other board members who have kind of chimed in here, put on the list, want to speak, but I just want to express that we do take this seriously, and I hope the fact that we’re I’m trying to go down a list of some of the concerns I’ve heard that I can answer is reflecting that and demonstrating the fact that we are listening and we are taking it seriously.

1:45:38
Mr. Dean, you’re up first. Yeah. So as far as the decibels reading goes, unfortunately, there’s no apps that are really accurate. Decibels have to be machines have to be calibrated and put at certain certain areas. So using just a cell phone won’t necessarily get you a good idea of, like, what the actual Decibels are going to be flying over or or in the area. So they wanted to do something like that, you’d have to actually have a decimal meter that’s calibrated

1:46:05
by a scientific or by a group to have something like that done so.

1:46:11
Thank you council member, Martin.

1:46:15
Thank you Mr. Chair.

1:46:18
First of all, thank you for explaining the Tabor enterprise, which was the main reason that that my light was on, was because, yeah, you know, the city cannot invest tax revenues that it collects in the airport. That’s the law. That’s the taxpayers Bill of Rights. So, except for state and federal grants. The only

1:46:43
money that the airport gets is the money the airport earns from hang arounds, fuel flowage fees.

1:46:52
You know, other things people talk about, landing fees, land feeding fees have to be approved by the FAA your ability to charge them and an example that a reason for a landing fee that they will not accept is to discourage student pilots, because the FAA wants to encourage student pilots. And several people asked, Why is it suddenly so much worse? And we have received data from the FAA about that that I assume will be shared in the November meeting, the November council meeting. But the simple answer is, there are a lot more student pilots, because there are incentives for student pilots. And as JD said, there are really good jobs for student pilots that get certified. So yeah, something changed this spring. There are a lot more student pilots, I would be surprised. And Levi you and I are going to have to check this afterward, because it’s really hard for an airline to AirPlay airport to ban touch and goes. Major commercial airports are allowed to because of safety reasons, but I’d really have to check to see whether Metra was allowed to ban touch and goes. They weren’t. And I can actually speak a little bit about this. I actually just thinking of revenue in general, reached out directly to the FAA to ask them about the applicability of

1:48:24
landing fees and stuff like that. They essentially pointed out that we definitely couldn’t do touch and go landing fees, because we can’t discourage touch and go. So they kind of answered both questions in kind of one swath when I reached out to them, and it’s the same deal with the suggestions about the tower, or a very well researched letter that I received about

1:48:50
monitoring equipment short of a tower, which is less expensive than a tower and doesn’t it’s automated, and you don’t have to do that. But again, the airport would have to pay for it.

1:49:01
They would, yeah, we would have to pay for it, or there would have to be a high enough need where we could then get essentially federal recognition that a tower would be required, then we could eventually

1:49:12
get in on those programs.

1:49:15
Our airports not nearly at that size. Fort Collins, Loveland is just barely at that fairly big enough. That’s where they’re significantly larger than us. So, yeah, I just wanted to address those questions, because it’s it’s hard

1:49:32
that everybody assumes that we could just change something, you know, and and

1:49:39
fix it. And the fact is that we only have jurisdiction for planes on the ground, and when the plane is in the air, you don’t get to tell them what to do.

1:49:52
Those noise abatement policies are voluntary, and we have no way of doing anything at all about.

1:50:00
Violations. You know, if it were our

1:50:05
flight school, here we might and there and there had consistent student violations, we might have find a way to find them and tell them to educate their students better, or something like that. But somebody else’s no because a general aviation airport is public, and that means that any plane that’s legal to land at that type of airport can do it. And I would point out that there are rules and regulations that pilots must follow, but yes, the jurisdiction over that would be the Federal Aviation Administration.

1:50:44
Yeah. So if you can get tail numbers, you can report the planes to the FAA,

1:50:51
and again, if you when we receive, you know, complaints about from with tail numbers regarding potential regulatory issues, that’s that’s checked into when complaints are made, and to make sure that you know there was or was not an issue. And there have been cases when people were were questioned by the FAA for activities in and around the airport. Right

1:51:14
then the last suggestion that I would like to make about the decibel levels,

1:51:21
almost

1:51:24
10 years ago now, there was an organization here who started out with those little

1:51:32
decibel meters. I don’t think it was a phone app at that time. You had to buy one, but they ended up bringing a complaint through the FAA took it all the way through the process, spent a fortune of their own money,

1:51:49
and the FAA came out and measured decibel levels and found no violations.

1:51:57
The

1:51:59
found no violations, no noise violations. Noise violations are hard because, you know, if you’re a student flying a plane that you don’t own, that plane is going to be compliant. You know, it’s an off the shelf FAA certified plane. It makes acceptable amounts of noise when it’s taking off, and acceptable amounts of noise when it’s landing. And what’s changed for you is the number of them that are doing that, but no one of them is exceeding FAA regulations any more than it did before. This is these are hard things

1:52:40
to learn, and I understand that it’s frustrating, and we’re frustrated too, but I just want everybody to have expectations about which agencies have jurisdictions over this process. And it’s not this board, and it’s not the city, and the main reason for this

1:53:02
council meeting is so that everyone can learn what expectations to have.

1:53:10
Thank you councilmember Martin, Mr.

1:53:14
Meester, first of all, thanks. Thank you everybody for coming. We do like to hear your voice. We like to hear your concerns. It’s important to us, if I may, I’d suggest that Longmont airport is suffering from a proximity problem. We’re basically halfway between Rocky Mountain Metro, formerly Jeffco and Loveland, and both of those are tower controlled airports, typically, if you’re doing, say, touch and goes, or any sort of pattern work of those airports, you may be number 1012, in line just for takeoff. So what happens is those people divert to here. And as a pilot who flies locally in a 19 59k 35 which definitely has a muffler, as they all do, I can tell you, it’s frustrating for us too.

1:54:03
It may be one tool that we could all use to suggest to the other FBOs at Jeffco and Loveland that they could divert their student traffic to other outlying airports. They’re out there.

1:54:19
They’re, you know, there’s plenty of them in the east, and they’re fairly close to the front range, and they’re not hard to get to. So

1:54:28
that might be a suggestion you can use.

1:54:31
Again. It’s been touched on a couple of times. Here. We are not the FAA. We have limited authority, if any at all. All we can do is listen to your complaints and suggestions and hopefully foster solutions. That’s our job.

1:54:49
Somebody mentioned landing fees,

1:54:52
as far as I know, they’re not existent. Longmont is a Class E airport. Jeffco and Loveland are Class D.

1:55:00
Reports, Colorado Springs is a Class C airport, and the only type of airport I know of that has landing fees is a Class B airport, and that is dia

1:55:11
also, the closure of Fort Collins was not due to noise it was due to the fact that that land was very desirable for housing development, and it’s now condos so it wasn’t closed for noise abatements,

1:55:25
other than that, again. Thank you very much.

1:55:30
Mr. Shuck

1:55:32
Hi. I’ve been a pilot for over 40 years, and as one of the pilots at Longmont, we’re frustrated also, I’ve sat on the run up area for 2025, 30 minutes, waiting my turn to take off, not to do touching goes, but to go to another airport.

1:55:56
You know, all of us can use practice on, you know, taken off in landings. You know that’s going to never end. But you know, when you’re sitting there and these student pilots are spread out and they’re doing these three mile, you know, downed wind legs to, you know, to base, those are the ones that are going over your houses,

1:56:23
if they would follow the the

1:56:27
average

1:56:30
spacing away from the airport, you guys probably wouldn’t be complaining, but their students,

1:56:41
I personally think it’s instructors that need to be schooled,

1:56:47
and the instructors bosses and you know, so I think with just reaching out to all these people,

1:57:00
you know, someone said 17 touching goes one airplane.

1:57:07
That’s to me, that’s a little hard to believe, because when I was training, you know, you’re, you know, in the mix and and it’s, you know, you’re nervous and you know, doing five or six. You’re worn out.

1:57:23
But, you know, I guess there are some people out there doing it. I’m not,

1:57:29
you know, saying that. You know, somebody was exaggerating. It could, it could happen. But

1:57:37
we’re here. We like when you guys come. We’ve been to we’ve come here. I’ve been on the board, what, two years now, and the boardroom has been empty most of the time. And so when people are here, we really appreciate what you have said, and we’re not taking it for granted. We want to try and make the community happy. We are frustrated with the amount of development that keeps

1:58:13
getting closer and closer and closer

1:58:17
to the airport itself. And you know, we haven’t been informed in a lot of years about those developments until they they start construction. So we’re frustrated, you’re frustrated, and we just need to work together to try to make some changes. And, you know,

1:58:42
but we like all the suggestions, and hopefully, you know, we could communicate and get this thing solved.

1:58:53
Council member Martin, yeah, sorry. I, I want to respond to the land use comments,

1:59:03
because, you know, it’s, it’s tempting to say, yes, we don’t put any more development around the airport,

1:59:12
that we can solve a big part of this problem.

1:59:17
And again, it comes down to

1:59:22
law higher up than us, and money

1:59:28
if and I’m not stop me if I’m now, I’m probably the jurisdiction. So I don’t know if, if a couple of developers had not changed their applications to improve, to require more

1:59:45
housing density,

1:59:48
then the FAA would not have gotten involved, because the FAA is fine with industrial, light industrial developments near airports, and that can include a small.

2:00:00
All amount of housing, live, work, kind of housing. But when you get greedy and say, oh, you know, bulk housing, high density housing, apartment buildings need to be part of this development, then you’re violating FAA guidelines. And in cases where a vulnerable airport that controls both the zoning and the airport like us

2:00:25
is is responsible, then the FAA will make an example of us, as they have done.

2:00:32
But if we do a thing like Go, go way past that and say, We’re not going to prove any developments as was suggested, then that’s called a taking because private people buy land to develop it and monetize it, and they do that in good faith. And property rights are foundational to the government of this country.

2:00:56
So

2:00:59
it is,

2:01:01
it is a violation of basic common law at all three levels of government.

2:01:08
For for us to say, yeah, in order to save ourselves trouble in the future, we’re going to make the zoning so draconian that nobody can build anything and your land isn’t good for anything anymore. The suggestion of finding a way to buy it and turn it into open space is viable,

2:01:31
although there are, there are constraints like that. But what we can’t do is do things that become a taking and it’s very risky for Longmont to do that, because new federal law says that you don’t have to go up through all of the tiers of state law and courts of appeals and stuff. You can go directly to federal district court and then to the Supreme Court, and it’s really very difficult for a city, a small city like us, to defend that so, you know, we can’t take extreme measures to sequester that land.

2:02:10
You cannot at this time. I’m sorry.

2:02:14
So you can, you can comment to any of us after the meeting.

2:02:20
I would, you know, Mr. Shook spoke about some frustration. One of the frustrations is the fact that we can’t have a back and forth, and that we’ve been advised by the city attorneys, when we rewrote our bylaws, that we can’t do that, despite us asking for it a couple years ago. So that is, that is an ongoing frustration of mine, that we’re a little bit limited what we can do. Board members, any other comments, Levi, staff comments or ideas for future agenda items from anybody this evening?

2:02:50
Okay, I think, as we’ve talked about, we’ll have noise abatement as a monthly thing. We’ll have development as a monthly topic. So I appreciate that

2:02:58
seeing no one else in the queue, I will go ahead and adjourn this meeting. Thank you all for being here tonight. Have a good evening. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai