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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCC AG PKT 2004-04-26 #E rl,, . 4i i r ,..'. ORANGE COUNTY REGIONAL AIRPORT AUTHORITY 11222 Acacia Parkway Garden Grove, CA 92840 0 CRA P (714) 741 -5363 (714) 741 -5044 fax MEMBER CITIES April 16, 2004 Costa Mesa Dear OCRAA Board Member, Cypress Garden Grove — Fullerton At the April 16, 2004 OCRAA Board meeting, several Board members asked that I Los Alamitos Newport Beach send a letter to each Board member and include an annual report on OCRAA Seal Beach Stanton activities. Board members would use this report to facilitate a discussion with the Villa Park Westminster fellow council members on the need to provide voluntary funding from member Yorba Linda cities. That report is attached. EX- OFFICIO MEMBERS - The OCRAA guidelines for member cities contributions are $500 per month for _ O.C. Business Council Airport Working Group s mall cities , and $1000 per month for large cities. Even in these difficult economic times this is a very modest contribution to continue our efforts. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Section 6.4 of the OCRAA JPA requires that Members shall notify the Executive Jack Wagner Director of the funds, if any, to be contributed to the Authority during the upcoming fiscal year. Therefore, I request that you review the attached report, and agendize this matter at your earliest convenience with your city council so that they can give it reasonable consideration as part of your city's budget process. Your consideration of this matter and notification to me prior to the end of the fiscal year • is greatly appreciated. If necessary, I would be happy to assist you in presenting this matter to your council. Please call me at 714- 741 -5363 if you have any questions. . Sincerely, A ‘ --- 7 J- agner utive Director _ . , . , . Item E ANNUAL REPORT ON OCRAA ACTIVITES Long Beach Airport Operations The City of Long Beach, which operates Long Beach Airport, attempted to approve a contract for a permanent terminal expansion in support of a significant increase in commercial aircraft operations. Last October, the OCRAA Executive Director, along with many community activists, spoke to the City Council urging them not to issue a contract without an EIR. Those efforts were successful, in that the City of Long Beach cancelled the issuance of the construction project, delayed the vote for 90 days, and then subsequently, cancelled the vote and began the preparation of an EIR on the airport expansion. To date, that EIR is still not completed and the proposed airport terminal expansion is delayed indefinitely. The -Long Beach Airport Noise Ordnance, which in the view of the OCRAA Executive Director, is a solid legal document that limits commercial aircraft operations based on noise rather than an arbitrary number. Based on this ordnance, a recent noise study conducted by the City of Long Beach found that current aircraft operations exceed the noise limitations contained in the ordnance. This new information has forced Long Beach to limit current operations and postpone any potential additional operations. The only solution available to Long Beach consistent with its noise ordnance is to wait for newer, quieter aircraft to be introduced before potential additional commercial aircraft operations can be allowed. The OCRAA Executive Director has been working with several community activist groups to ensure that Long Beach strictly adheres to its own ordnance. It is in the best interest of Long Beach to adhere to its 1991 ordnance because it is "grand- fathered" under the federal airport noise control act. If Long Beach modifies or replaces this ordnance with a new one, all local limits on operations are removed. Specifically, this means that there will be no increase in the number of commercial aircraft operations. Long Beach commercial aircraft arrival altitudes have been an issue of particular concern to OCRAA member cities under the arrival pattern to Long Beach. This issue is under the control of the FAA, which rarely accommodates altitude changes strictly based on concerns about aircraft noise. The FAA takes a strong position that aircraft safety will never be comprised for the sake of noise. Fortunately, our raising concerns about the aircraft altitudes over Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach caught their attention when it was pointed out that aircraft safety would not be jeopardized by an increase in arrival altitudes. The bottom line on this issue is that the FAA has agreed and has implemented an increase in aircraft altitudes from 1600 feet to 3000 feet for normal operations. What this means is that aircraft flying over Costa Mesa will now normally fly almost twice as high as they did previously. There will be times, based on increased traffic volume, when the FAA may have to direct aircraft to a lower altitude to ensure safe separation of aircraft. Therefore, although we have been successful on this issue, continuing efforts must be made to limit additional aircraft operations at both John Wayne and Long Beach to ensure that aircraft altitudes are not lowered on a frequent and regular basis. Seal Beach/ Los Alamitos Military Bases Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach and Joint Forces Training Base Los Alamitos are an important ongoing concern. In reality, Los Alamitos operates a military airfield that is capable of handling large commercial jet operations (Air Force One lands there occasionally). Seal Beach is a very large military base (5256 acres) larger than El Toro and is on flat land. OCRAA actively supported increased funding for Los Alamitos, and was successful this year when DOD significantly increased it operations and maintenance budget for this facility. Seal Beach, however, can be the issue of greater concern. In 2005, the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission will convene to identify additional bases for closure and Seal Beach will undergo significant scrutiny this time. This is because the Navy has centralized its entire West Coast operations heavily in the San Diego area. Justification for Seal Beach will be questioned because of the logistics of operating a weapons storage facility in northwest Orange County when the fleet that it serves is in South San Diego County. The real concern is that closure of Seal Beach will open up the potential for Seal Beach to be considered as a commercial airport site serving southern California and Orange County in particular. Seal Beach actually has more flat land acreage than El Toro (5276 acres vs. 3700 acres at El Toro). Two possibilities exist: 1) Seal Beach is closed and operates on a runway alignment parallel to Los Alamitos. This would provide a strong argument for making Seal Beach a very large capacity airport and will be strongly supported by Long Beach residents who want to reduce or eliminate operations at Long Beach. Aircraft would arrive from the northeast severely impacting North Orange County cities including Westminster, Cypress, Stanton, Garden Grove, Anaheim, Fullerton, Placentia, and Yorba Linda. 2) Seal Beach is closed and operates on a runway alignment parallel to Long Beach airport. If Long Beach remains open, Seal Beach must have a runway alignment basically parallel to Long Beach in order to operate safely. It is to close to Long Beach to have a runway alignment similar to Los Alamitos, whose runway is perpendicular to Long Beach. A northwest /southeast runway alignment will produce a runway arrival track parallel to that of Long Beach, but the aircraft arrival altitudes over Orange County cities will be significantly lower than Long Beach. Given the significant lack of runway capacity in Southern California, as clearly identified in the SCAG Regional transportation Plan, we can expect much political pressure to be exerted for Seal Beach to be closed and converted to a commercial airport. OCRAA involvement in the early stages of the BRAC process to protect Seal Beach from closure may be our most critical task for the upcoming year. • Transportation Alternatives Without El Toro With the passage of Measure W, we found ourselves with the same concerns and objectives when OCRAA was formed in 1974 — finding a suitable airport site to meet Orange County's growing air passenger and air cargo needs. OCRAA undertook an analysis of various transportation alternatives to find acceptable solutions to meet our needs yet not impose significant negative impacts on OCRAA member cities, namely traffic and air pollution. Representatives from SCAG, OCTA, City of Anaheim, Southern California High Speed Rail, and Tritunnel made presentations to OCRAA on their proposed solutions. OCRAA used the "SCAG Regional Transportation Plan Evaluation Criteria" to evaluate these alternatives and determine those that produced satisfactory and • acceptable results. The only alternative that was able to meet the SCAG criteria and offer a solution to get Orange County passengers and cargo to an airport outside of Orange County while meeting OCRAA's concerns was the Tritunnel proposal. This proposal not only addressed the need to move autos and trucks to and from Orange County and Riverside via a new corridor, but it afforded the opportunity to get passengers and air cargo to Ontario and March without impacting OCRAA cities. The OCRAA Board unanimously supported further consideration of the Tritunnel proposal. OCTA in conjunction with RCTC is conducting a Major Investment Study that will now include the tunnel proposal and OCRAA staff has requested to participate as a major stakeholder. DOD Federal EIS on El Toro Record of Decision OCRAA and the Airport Working Group brought suit against the Department of Defense on the suitability of the Federal EIS on the Navy's decision to transfer the El Toro property in cooperation with the City of Irvine's proposal. The primary basis of that lawsuit was that the Navy only relied on its records regarding where contaminated and hazardous materials were buried, and did not consider the possibility that contaminated and hazardous materials may have been dumped on other areas of the base over its 57- year history. OCRAA and AWG were successful in that lawsuit. Specifically, DOD must conduct additional studies on contamination at the base and OCRAA and AWG must be included in every step of the studies and investigations. We are confident that these studies will show that there are additional locations containing hazardous material that must be removed and/or the property cleaned prior to transfer of the property. This is an ongoing action requiring oversight. Irvine Annexation of El Toro With the passage of Measure W the City of Irvine began the annexation process for El Toro. OCRAA and the Airport Working Group raised considerable issues regarding the EIR drafted by the City of Irvine primarily regarding traffic and air pollution. In addition, • CALTRANS filed a separate lawsuit against Irvine regarding traffic. CALTRANS challenged Irvine's traffic estimate of 130,000 average daily trips generated by the "Great Park" proposal, and stated that the traffic generated is more likely 500,000 average daily trips. CALTRAN successfully settled that lawsuit with Irvine, in that Irvine will have to revise their study. There are two lawsuits pending regarding this issue. One against the City of Irvine challenging the adequacy of their annexation EIR, and one against LAFCO for its approval of Irvine's annexation based on Irvine's EIR. It should be noted that LAFCO, in its approval, required Irvine to indemnify LAFCO in the event the annexation approval is challenged in court. LAFCO's own legal counsel advised the commission that if the underlying EIR is faulty the Annexation approval is voided. At this time we are awaiting a ruling by the presiding judge on a summary motion from Irvine to dismiss the lawsuit. This same judge has rejected two other motions from Irvine to dismiss portions of this lawsuit. If the legal action against Irvine's EIR is successful, the LAFCO lawsuit will in all likelihood be successful. On the other hand, if the lawsuit against Irvine's lawsuit is not successful, there is no point in pursuing the existing LAFCO lawsuit further. Litigation & Strategy Because of the ongoing lawsuits, I am not at liberty to discuss lawsuit details and strategy. These matters have been discussed in closed session and your Board member has this information. The important issues to realize are that the County is allowing an extremely valuable asset, El Toro, to be turned over to the City of Irvine for non - aviation "park" use, and that the residents in north Orange county cities, which have little parkland per capita compared to Irvine, accrue no benefits and are subjected to greater traffic and air pollution concerns. Aggressive involvement in litigation, which has no cost or liability to OCRAA or its member cities, is still necessary for a more satisfactory outcome to occur. Potential Action to Discontinue County of Orange Sole Control of John Wayne Airport There is word of a proposal to form a joint powers authority to take control of John Wayne Airport from the County and put it in the hands of the cities "adjacent" to the airport. An earlier proposal by the City of Newport Beach to annex John Wayne Airport was adamantly opposed by the County. This new effort proposes a joint powers authority composed of the County of Orange, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Irvine, Santa Ana, and, possibly, Tustin. As more information becomes available, an analysis and recommendation to the OCRAA Board will be prepared on the advantages and disadvantages of this proposal. Conclusion Total expenditures for OCRAA this current fiscal year have been less than $40,000. Future OCRAA actions are very dependent on the outcome of pending litigation and our ability to influence the BRAC decision process (which will begin soon). OCRAA can meet these challenges within the proposed budget for the fiscal year, but its ability to commit resources is dependent on member city voluntary contributions. I have attached the April 14, 2003 OCRAA Board meeting Agenda Item V.1 which states the need for continued member city voluntary contributions, guidelines for those contributions and the draft budget for next fiscal year. Agenda Item V.1. ORANGE COUNTY REGIONAL AIRPORT AUTHORITY TO: OCRAA Board members FROM: Jack Wagner, Executive Director SUBJECT: Operating Funds and Member City Commitments The purpose of this agenda item is to initiate the process of ascertaining the operating funds available for the upcoming fiscal year. Section 6.1 of the JPA requires that the Board adopt an annual budget for the ensuing fiscal year if projected revenues during that fiscal year exceed five thousand dollars ($5,000). Section 6.4 of the JPA requires that "Members shall notify the Executive Director, prior to May 1 of each year, of the funds, if any, to be contributed to the Authority during the upcoming fiscal year." Therefore, staff requests individual Board Members, as the representatives of their cities, seek their City Council approval /commitment of funds for FY 2004 -2005. The guideline for member city contributions consists of an annual contribution of $6,000 for the small cities (population less than 100,000) and $12,000 for the larger cities (population greater than 100,000. This equates to a $500 per month and $1,000 per month contribution per city, respectively. If all 10 members of OCRAA made this contribution, the annual revenue would be $72,000. Member contributions to OCRAA are voluntary, and not all member cities have contributed in the past. During FY 2003 -2004, only four cities made a monetary contribution to OCRAA, which totaled $25,200. It should be noted that the City of Garden Grove has continued to provide significant administrative and office support. The OCRAA work plan for FY 2004 -2005 is a continuing effort to: protect OCRAA member cities in the JWA corridor from additional airport expansion; retain the Los Alamitos /Seal Beach military facilities, and protect OCRAA member cities in the LGB corridor from additional airport expansion; support realistically achievable transportation alternatives that mitigate /solve the air transportation demand shortfall in Orange County; and support all efforts to convert El Toro to a civilian commercial airport. The resources to implement this work plan come from member cities contributions, and the extent of OCRAA's ability to accomplish the work program is dependent on the extent of contributions received. Staff estimates a carryover of funds from the current fiscal year to be approximately $2,700. The proposed Budget for fiscal year 2004 -2005 is attached. Recommendations: 1) That individual Board Members, as the representatives of their cities, seek their City Council approval /commitment of funds (in accordance with the contribution guidelines) for FY 2004 -2005. No Board Action Required. - PROPOSED OCRAA OPERATING BUDGET FOR THE FISCAL YEAR COMMENCING JULY 1, 2004 AND ENDING JUNE 30, 2005 REVENUES Carryover Funds from Current Fiscal Year $2,700 Contributions From Member Cities $ 50,000 Total $52,700 EXPENDITURES STAFFING COSTS Executive Director $40,500 OPERATIONAL COSTS* Audit, Tax Filing $2,700 Legal $1,000 Miscellaneous Office Expenses $1,000 Reserve for Contingencies $7,500 Total $52.700 * City of Garden Grove to continue providing Office Support & Space