News
Text of Sept. 17 City Att'y Office Update to Council re Negotiations Concerning LB Airport Flight Slots, and Sept. 19 Update to Airport Advisory Comm'n
(September 19, 2002) -- In the public interest, LBReport.com posts below a transcript (unofficial, prepared by us) of an update by City Attorney Robert Shannon, delivered at the September 17, 2002 Council meeting, on negotiations concerning LB Airport flight slots. A report had been requested and agendized by Councilmembers Carroll, Webb and Reyes-Uranga.
City Attorney Shannon: ...I will say that I am just as optimistic now as I was when I made my original announcement. [August 27, 2002 Council meeting; for our transcript within previous LBReport.com coverage, click here]
We are proceeding forward. I will say that the details, the specific details of the agreement, are rather complicated, much more complicted than perhaps you might realize. And we've realized from the beginning that any agreement will require a formal buy-off by the FAA, and since it is a federal government organization, nothing happens terribly quickly.
It's always been our estimate that we'll probably conclude this item sometime in early to mid October. We're aiming for early October but it might end up in mid October.
I will say that in addition to drafting the fine points of the deal, the City Attorney's office and Mr. Gatzke, our outside counsel, are planning to travel next week to Washington, D.C. to talk specifically to the FAA about this agreement.
So we are aggressively working on it. It is a complicated agreement. I am optimistic and although we're not there yet, I do anticipate that sometime in October, we'll have some good news for you.
As a follow up, at the September 19 meeting of the Airport Advisory Commission, Principal Deputy City Attorney Mike Mais provided the following written advisory which was read verbatim at the meeting by Airport Manager Chris Kunze:
The City Attorney's Office is continuing to negotiate an amicable resolution to the slot allocation issue with the goal to preserve the city's existing Noise Compatibility Ordinance. Together with outside legal counsel, negotiations with the FAA as well as the interested stakeholders have continued on a daily basis.
It is hoped that the negotiations will be completed no later than the second week in October and that the FAA will sanction the resolution shortly thereafter.
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