Hogwash. These people have been complaining about this for THREE YEARS, long before I even heard of the issue.
And you think meetings will stop that? LOL...
Furthermore, if you had listened to the comments in the meeting, you would know that it was the complainers who brought up the nature of the sound. "Buzzy" or "annoying" may not have been the exact wording they used, but it was words to that effect. I'm just trying to understand what they're complaining about. So now you want to blame it on ME?
I didn't blame anyone. I pointed out the comment above by pilots isn't helping your case.
Trying to sweep the issue under the rug is a losing strategy, and it's clear that these people are NOT going to give up on their lobbying efforts.
Two questions: Why? And so what?
I am unable to convince myself that what works for defendants works in the political arena. Bill Clinton made that mistake and paid serious political consequences for it.
Huh. Did he lose his job? Not doing any politics anymore? What consequences?
How do you propose that airport supporters stop the Board of Supervisors from putting this issue on their meeting agendas?
I already said how, send a letter saying essentially, "Not the municipality's jurisdiction.", Signed... Everyone. Unless you're the airline, you're just a spectator anyway. Let the airline professional PR people handle going TO the meeting with a nice letter signed by however many other businesses will put in writing that they support them.
Maybe I should just send them copies of your posts and that will convince them.
You can be as upset with me as you like, it has no bearing on what the FAA or the airport decides. I've seen it before, all the meetings do is give TV stations a reason to broadcast the false debate (because the whole thing isn't anyone's business except the airline, the airport authority, and the FAA) and keep stoking the fire. The more publicity, the more complainers. The more "voluntary compromises" that affect safety, like unrealistic noise abatement procedures that can't be followed 100% of the time, triggering more "outrage", etc.
Let 'em go to court. They'll lose. Just like the idiots complaining at KLMO about the noise of a Twin Otter doing skydive runs, lost. Public debate over it just brought more complainers once it hit the newsies' desks and they started putting on the 5, 6, and 10 o'clock broadcasts.
Reacting, in and of itself, is playing into their hands. It always is. So they've complained for three years? So what?
To use your analogy, people still complain about Clinton... Nothing of consequence happened to him. Didn't slow him down one bit.
I know everyone always wants to "play nice with the neighbors", but when the neighbors are simply wrong, and don't understand how the airport was funded and the mandatory requirement of public use behind that funding, there's very little point in engaging. The airport powers that be can hold meetings until the cows come home.
If they don't have the legal authority to remove the airline, they simply don't. If they do, you go public with how much tax revenue they're going to give up. Tie it to money and jobs, and they're toast.
No point at all showing up at a firefight without a strategy to win it, just to play "supportive spectators".
If the airport tenants are willing to truly be supportive, they hire a PR persona and a lawyer and point them at the defense strategy.
At one local airport the strategy that won was slapping defective property notices on every house that complained. First a special complaint hotline number was recommended to be established, and complaints had to have name, address, and time of day. For accuracy and tracking purposes of course.
Next step... FOIA request for all complainants. And one attorney paid by some folks who could afford to play. "You see, Your Honor, obviously in a full-disclosure real-estate State, if someone is so troubled by all this terrible noise, the house must be listed as defective at that address, and it should be noted for any future buyer in the sales documentation, just how many noise complaints came from this property, so as to protect any potential future buyers, wouldn't you agree? Perhaps it has inadequate construction or insulation to be so close to an operating airport. We can't be sure, but certainly X number of complaints a week indicates a problem there."
Homeowners found themselves taking a significant valuation hit on their "defective" property. Only took a few cases for the Judge to order the complaint line permanently shut down.
Airport authority learned to ignore the calls from certain phone numbers and that was that. All anyone had to do is recommend a "complaint hotline" again, whenever the complaints get too thick in decade long wave patterns, and enough people remember the last time, and just close the meeting and head home without spending any time entertaining the complaints. Airport authority had to release the details of who complained under FOIA, and they wanted nothing to do with it ever again.
Funny how when you punch back really hard (losing big money on a house sale wasn't what the complainers expected, but was justified) the whiners stop whining so hard. You need a few strategists who'll punch, and not coffee talk and endless meetings.
Especially if like you say, they've been complaining for years. Either ignore it, and let them try to sue, and then hit back, or find a way like the above to hit back. Nothing will satisfy them. Never does.
Playing public patty cake just gets media attention and attracts more nuts who didn't know they live near an airport.
