The Airport
- nealsshah
- Jul 22, 2023
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 23, 2023
All (I'm wearing my Mayor Pro-Tem hat with this post), I wanted to share a letter that was just sent by the Town of Superior Board to the JeffCo Commissioners. But, a bit of a history lesson is needed to give some perspective on how we got here.
In 2018, the noise complaints became a key part of the election in Superior. We felt that we were not being heard or taken seriously by JeffCo. I found the phone number for the FAA and started (and telling others) to call them directly about every low flying plane I saw. They investigated a number of the issues and, i think, finally had enough. The FAA summoned a number of the local electeds to the airport and told us to get a noise roundtable started. In parallel, the ToS also hired ABCx2 consultants to help with the problem. We were able to get Louisville to pay for half of the cost. ABCx2 held a report out at the Louisville Rec center in late 2019 to deliver their results.
They had a number of common sense recommendations and also acknowledged that a CNR is a key aspect of the process. The CNR helps ensure that you can't squeeze noise onto a different community as the impact has to be equitable (insert eye roll here). Obviously the pandemic happened in 2020 and not only curtailed getting the CNR going, but also quite a bit of the noise.
In 2021/2022 we started getting the CNR off the ground and Mark Lacis was gracious enough to chair the roundtable which brought together all the folks in the "influence zone." He did an admirable job of herding the cats in spite of the inherent challenges to the process. The board has been completely united on the need to do something and while one or two of us may have the microphone at any given time, we're all rowing in the same general direction.
With the election in 2022, Mark stepped down and Jason Serbu took over the role of being our rep to the CNR. Jason has tried to speed up the CNR process by doing all the leg work himself in terms of identifying flight paths.
In parallel, the Town Board just sent the letter below to Jefferson County Commissioners. This is part of a broader strategy to continue to appeal to the next higher level. While we've continued to work with the airport in earnest, the JeffCo commissioners have a lot more influence over the airport than I believe we realized before. Given the financial straights that JeffCo is in, I believe that there are more options at the fingertips to both curtail touch-and-gos while also improving the financial picture of the county.
Nevertheless, here is the letter.
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