Monthly archives for January, 2007
My daughter on Devils Elbow Road earlier this month
I am leaning against a Corporate Jet Center at Renton Airport
Our Airport has been the subject of a master-planning process for several years, and a number of airport options are currently on the table for community and council consideration. Among the options, is the creation of a corporate jet center.
I opposed this concept along with former-mayor Jesse Tanner many years ago, but have been more open-minded this time around due to the innovation of Very Light Jets(VLJs) along with quieter jets in general. I have been anxious for council and the public to get more information on this option, and I am pleased that a series of open houses is scheduled to gather input. Given the passion in the council mail, and email, on this topic, I also decided to post my own analysis of the situation, and get input from a sampling of the public on a Myspace blog. While the letters, open house data, and web-log input are still coming in, I can see already that the public understands this topic well enough to know that many, many people (and perhaps most) do not want a corporate jet center.
My Myspace Blog on this topic, and the comments I received back, are available by clicking here
Even if merely 20% of the public hated this idea, I don’t think we should do it. We don’t need to create divisiveness in our community over this issue, since there are many other ways that the airport can serve us. The problem with the jet center is once it is built, it would be impossible to get rid of if it created division and anger. Many of us remember a public backlash against a helicopter operator at the airport ten years ago, and we were counting the days until we could get them out of their lease….fortunately they had not built special facilities to accommodate them.
I have not spoken to any other council members about my recent position on the jet center, and we do not meet tomorrow night since it is a fifth Monday; council members will find out my view along with the public by reading this livejournal entry. (Council collegues, I hope none of you are too disappointed in my position on this, but this is how I see it.)
It sounds like a restaurant and new general aviation hangers would get pretty wide approval, so that is the direction I think we should head. Please feel free to leave comments below.
Best Wishes,
Randy
A little more on public email; USA Today picks up the story
I really appreciated the strong positive response to my making my council email available for informal public review, anytime. I was intrigued with how the story traveled across the US, and how so many people recognized the numerous advantages in taking this step.
The local story was picked up by the Associated Press, several radio and television stations, and even made USA Today.
The move was also discussed in many online blogs, like this one (click here).
I also recieved calls from councilmembers in nearby jurisdictions, who said they were considering doing the same thing.
Interestingly, almost everyone I spoke with agreed that publiishing the email would also increase courtesy and civility, something which we can never have too much of as far as I’m concerned.
I am anxious to move to the next step of publishing all council emails in an online data base, for easy search on the web. As an alternative, or in addition, a blog system could be developed for council communication to keep the system public and interactive. To do this we will need to make some policy changes within city hall, and I will be pressing for this over the coming months.
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