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LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
A joint hearing of the Portland City Council and the Port of Portland Commission on the draft Portland International Airport Master Plan, scheduled for Nov. 3, was abruptly cancelled last month. This was due to circumstances that, according to different sources, were unforeseeable or fully predictable.
The draft Plan set out future development projects at the airport. It also detailed traffic mitigation measures on approach roads that the Port would fund as passenger activity at the airport reached designated levels; specified environmental restoration measures, mostly in the Columbia Slough and Government Island, that the Port would institute in concert with future development on Port property; called for creation of a permanent Citizen Advisory Committee that would consider future issues as they emerge; and prescribed new environmental restrictions on the development of private property adjacent to the Port's holdings.
A 30-member Public Advisory Group approved the Plan earlier this year, after three years of study, by unanimous vote, although some members reserved the right to submit independent statements that would be printed as appendices to the document. The Portland Planning Commission approved the document after three public hearings.
The fly in the ointment proved to be the Federal Aviation Administration, whose authority includes oversight on how funds generated at an airport are spent. They must be spent on things directly related to the airport's operations, according to federal regulations, and in the FAA's opinion, the Plan's traffic and environmental mitigation efforts didn't qualify.
At a PAG meeting held last month with limited public notice, City and Port planners suggested moving forward with other parts of the Plan, and leaving the mitigation issues to be worked out later. PAG member Bob Sallinger of the Portland Audubon Society vehemently objected, and the rest of the PAG eventually agreed with his decision by consensus.
City and Port planners had suggested moving forward with the hearing, working out the specifics of the mitigation procedures at a future time. Sallinger had protested. “From the point of view of the neighbors of the Port and the environment, the mitigation measures are the most important part of the plan,” he told the Memo.
Sallinger says that, based on past actions, the FAA's response was predictable. “They're obstructionist, short-sighted and unhelpful,” he says. Knowing this and knowing that the agency had yet to give its approval to the Master Plan, he and Audubon “went along with the process longer than we should have. We agreed to endorse the Plan. We agreed to not bring this up during the Planning Commission hearings. We finally said, 'Wait a minute.'”
PAG member Fred Stovel, a member of the Rose City Park Neighborhood Association and the grassroots Airport Issues Roundtable, says that postponement “was a difficult decision, but we all agreed it was the best thing to do.” Among other things, he says, public notice of the Plan's specific components, while meeting legal requirements, was not as good as it might have been.
The FAA is short-sighted, Sallinger says, because the Port would have to spend more in airport funds on processes to win approval for individual projects, as they do under current procedures, than they would on the implementation measures. With everything agreed to in advance, he says, “The Plan benefits everyone.”
He complained that the FAA had a representative on the PAG, yet had waited until the end of the process to voice its concerns. Stovel, a retired airline pilot, was more forgiving, noting that the mitigation issues that are the agency's concerns weren't fully developed until the end of the process.
Chris Corich of the Port says that since the cancellation the Port has made progress in meeting the FAA's concerns. They have agreed to Airport funds being used to pay for part, but not all, of mitigation measures on Northeast Columbia Boulevard and to some, but not all, of the environmental restoration work, with some reservations about measures at the slough.
Stovel felt that there may be an advantage to postponing the Council hearings until after the elections are over and the congressional delegation is no longer occupied with being re-elected. “The FAA is most responsive to pressure from above,” he says.
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