Northern Hills Homeowner's Association

Is this a Democracy, or what?

Jul 02, 2001

Bi-Monthly Noise Committee Meets
The bimonthly meeting of the San Antonio Airport Noise Abatement Committee was held on June 5th, at 12:00 in the Conference room of Terminal 1.

Meeting minutes were given and one of the board members mentioned that they felt that citizen comments were an important part of the meeting, and wanted to know why citizen comments were not part of the minutes. Mr. Kelley joined in saying that he would like to have citizen comments added to the meeting minutes as well, because he feels they are needed to remind everyone of what was said.

Mr. Carpenter stated that this was his last meeting as chairman, because by law, the chair would be passed to the district 8 councilman, Mr. Shubert on the next meeting.

Mr. Selemi asked for a report of how far each neighborhood is from the end of each runway.

Airport Noise Mitigation Officer, Jerry Rankin stated that the Acoustical treatement plan was awaiting Part 150 approval.

Jerry Rankin reported that the first phase of the hush house was 25% complete and that by the end of July, the first phase will be completed.

Discussion turned to the Part 150 update.

Mr. Kelley said that he had read through the 300 page book compiled by Ricondo and prepared for the Part 150 Update study. These were the public comments that were given to the stenographers at Coker United Methodist Church last year. (68 of the comments were by Northern Hills residents). He felt that the comments were based on ''heresay'' and emotion, and because of that, all comments that had to do with safety should be excluded from the book. Thankfully, many board members disagreed with Mr. Kelley.

At the end of the meeting, when citizens attending this meeting were asked to make comments, Northern Hills Homeowners Association President, Mike Gallagher challenged Mr. Kelly's thoughts, and reminded him that the safety issue was not something ''we'' dreamed up, but was formulated from discussions with air traffic controllers, pilots and industry analysts. He also reminded Mr. Kelley that we had been told that forcing all traffic into one corridor was dangerous. To reduce the danger, all flights would have to be staggered further apart, necessitating traffic delays.

Then, Mr. Gallagher pointed out how ironic is was that Mr. Kelley wanted all citizen comments to be included in the committee meeting minutes, but when he opjected to the content of the citizen comments that were to be sent to the FAA, he wanted them removed.

I find this amusing. How about you?

Write the Mayor, and your councilman, David Carpenter, and let him know the comments you made should not be thrown away because a board member does not agree with them.