Santa Monica Begins Official Look at Airport's Future

The  has taken the first steps in formalizing and structuring the debate over the future of (SMO) and the land on which it is situated.

The action, which happened at Tuesday night's meeting, was prompted by the approaching 2015 expiration of the 1984 operating agreement SMO has with the Federal Aviation Administration. So far, questions of SMO's safety, noise and pollution have been debated largely—though not exclusively—through media commentaries and letters to the editor, complaints to the airport staff and occasional rallies.

The council unanimously authorized the city to contract with Rand Corp. and a company called Point C to undertake, respectively, the tasks of doing a thorough study of possible uses for the airport after 2015 and maximizing public input, an estimated 12-month process.

The council considered the proposal at 11:35 p.m., an illustration, perhaps, of the need for a more structured gathering of opinions. Only four members of the public spoke.

Zina Josephs, president of Friends of Sunset Park, said her neighborhood association's board believes health-risk studies should be a primary consideration in deciding SMO's future, a wish echoed by Councilman Bob Holbrook.

City Manager Rod Gould said the city is awaiting results from several studies of SMO's impact on health. ''We'll know a lot more about these health studies in coming months, and that may have a very direct impact on the community dialogue that ensues,'' Gould said.

Ben Marcus, a 28-year-old flight instructor and co-owner of an aircraft sales firm, said he was raised in a home about 750 feet from SMO. ''My vision consists of a shorter runway, possibly grass,'' he said, ''with runway safety areas ... along with a world-class museum and archival institution celebrating Donald Douglas, a beautiful air/space theme park'' and other features.

The Rand contract will cost up to $145,000, with the Point C contract costing a maximum of $81,500, Gould said.

In a separate action, the council approved spending up to $220,000 to retain former FAA official Kirk Shaffer as a consultant to guide the city's fight against the FAA's proposed change in the post-takeoff flight path of some propeller-driven planes that would take them over Sunset Park and Ocean Park.

Council members had lambasted Shaffer at a public hearing in 2008 before the council's unanimous vote to ban Class C and D jets from SMO. The ban was blocked by a federal judge and the issue is now in the hands of a federal appellate court in Washington, D.C.

Councilman Kevin McKeown acknowledged the irony in hiring Shaffer, whom the council saw as part of the FAA's refusal to negotiate SMO's issues in good faith. McKeown even featured part of Shaffer's 2008 appearance on his Web page, showing a rattled Shaffer stating that pilot and passenger convenience come ahead of safety—then correcting himself.

But Councilman Bobby Shriver joined McKeown in defending Shaffer's hiring, saying the city is ''in bad shape'' in the fight against the proposed flight path change and that Shaffer is now a logical choice to press the city's case.

(For more coverage of Tuesday night's City Council meeting, go to this story about an update on the Palisades Garden Walk, about the ending of the ban on beekeeping in Santa Monica and about the council's approval of the $34 million sale of Pacific Park.)