November 29, 2022 Port Commission Meeting

Commissioners,

Congratulations on passing the Port’s 2023 Budget at your 29 November meeting. Here are a few thoughts about that meeting, the budget you passed, and the year ahead:

1. There was not a single question asked regarding Passenger Facility Charges. There should have been. PFCs are but one revenue source that can be used for noise mitigation (just like the Tax Levy.) And just like the Tax Levy, they have been used primarily to pay off bond debt.  In fact, you are still paying off debt from the Third Runway.

2. It was also interesting to note that Sound Transit was used as a reference for increasing your executive spending cap (‘delegation authority’.) I dunno how closely you follow local news, but you might wanna take a look at some of S/T’s difficulties in managing costs. $300,000 here, $300,000 there… and pretty soon you’re at 310% of budget and you leave over 2,000 homes without the sound insulation systems… Sorry, I was channeling that Third Runway again.

3. Operations on both sides of the house have already rebounded to 2019 levels. Heady times. But it is also worth noting that, once again, not one new dollar was spent on any direct impacts from airport noise and pollution.

• In fact, not one new sound insulation system or update has been identified since 1996. Every year the number of eligible homes goes down.
• Not a single air quality monitor has been installed–though identified as a priority as early as 1976.
• Even small items like the runway glide slope (which your START group keeps banging on about) were identified as problematic as early as 1971.

4. Instead, you spent 2022 showing off apprenticeships, Maritime High School, some high visibility minority-based spends, and then reassuring the public that you are excited about a new Part 150 Study and that you will do everything required by NEPA and SEPA as the SAMP moves forward.

How things are…

To which I say this: the Port has broken faith with the communities who pay the price for your success.

• As Stan Shepherd told you, every subsequent Part 150 process has actually reduced the number of eligible homes. Likewise every NEPA/SEPA process has required your neighbour cities to bleed themselves dry in court to obtain basic environmental improvements (water quality) the Port could have (should have) done voluntarily.
• And all those very nice grant programs are substitutes (and very small ones) for the hundreds of millions of dollars in externalities that are rarely even acknowledged anymore. Not just the noise and the pollution but also the loss in tax base which breeds so many social problems. And the sharp decline in public education directly caused by your expansions.

To be clear: your various environment and human service efforts are real; they’re not just nice press releases. But the human programs help only a small fraction of the people under the flight path and the environmental programs help none.

How it was supposed to be

The original purpose of the 1976 Sea-Tac Communities Plan was to acknowledge that something real needed to be done for those surrounding communities, without having to go to court just to get clean air, clean water and good schools. It was meant to be pro-active.

From the Peat, Marwick first year audit of the plan The Sea-Tac Success Story’

As one of the first airport sponsors in the country to be sued… the Port had little or no guidance from elsewhere as to how to deal with the problem(s). In the absence of such guidance, what may be termed a “let them sue” approach was essentially followed by the Port during the period from 1957 to 1972. Under this approach, every lawsuit was contested in court. If the Port won, no further action would be
taken…

Basically, the Port has walked back all that progress and reverted to adopting that same re-active approach. You’ve done nothing in decades to address any of the direct impacts of the airport unless you’ve been compelled to do so. Instead, you’ve become experts at substitution.

To a better new year…

In 2023 you can spend a million on the Port Package Updates. You can spend another million and set up the air quality monitoring system promised back in the 1976. You can fast track the glide slope fix that has been waiting for fifty years. And you can task your airport director with negotiating with the FAA Regional Director to expand the list of available uses for PFCs and AIP money–just as their counterparts did back in the ’70’s.

You can do ten things to make our lives better in 2023 without breaking a sweat financially, without interrupting your growth and without using the FAA or NEPA or SEPA as excuses for what can’t be done.

All it takes is to have the same will your predecessors had back in the 1970’s. All it takes is to stop substituting the “jobs!” and “growth!” mantras for what communities like Des Moines really need: clean air, sound insulation, structural revenue. All it takes is to decide to do more.

Your 2023 budget is, in many ways a success. But writ large, it is no more ‘progressive’ than budgets passed by any of your neoliberal predecessors going back to the 1980’s. Because of increased flight operations you will harm the residents of the airport communities at least as much in 2023 as was the case in 1983 and that should be intolerable to a Port that says it is committed to social justice.

When I’ve told you all that Sea-Tac Airport used to be the real innovator on airport impacts that was no joke. The STCP was meant to be the model for developing a good working relationship between a major airport and its communities. It can be again.

I urge you to review the STCP. Start learning how things were meant to be here. And re-commit to a better future for your airport neighbors in the coming year.

On behalf of everyone at STNI,

Happy Holidays.

—JC