[meeting-generated-transcript]
[Meeting begins at 6:10 p.m. — delayed due to elevator issues at Burien City Hall]
Brian Davis (Vice Chair, Burien Airport Committee, presiding): Once again, for anybody who’s joining us online, we’re having some elevator issues here at City Hall. We will begin this joint meeting of the Burien Airport Committee and the Des Moines Airport Advisory Committee at 6:10, give or take. Thanks for your patience.
[Recess — technical setup]
Davis: Okay. Thanks for everybody’s patience. Is Bob still doing elevator duty downstairs? Do we need to send for him? [To staff] Would you? All right. And I’ll go ahead — we’ll get to the roll call.
It is 6:10. We have withstood our elevator issues and we are ready to begin. This is a joint meeting of the Burien Airport Committee and the Des Moines Airport Advisory Committee. For the Burien Airport Committee, Nate, would you please call the roll?
[Roll call — Burien Airport Committee]
Nate (staff): Chair Moore?
Sara Moore: Present.
Nate: Vice Chair Davis?
Davis: Present.
[Members]: Here. Here.
Nate: Lewis?
Lewis Tracy: Here.
Nate: Karen?
Karen Valoria: Here.
Davis: Alejandra let me know that today was the last day of school, so she was a little bit awash in other events. She’s asked us to make an assignment, which we’ll be happy to do. She is unable to attend, but we do have a quorum.
Joe, as the chair of the Des Moines Committee, do you have a roll to call?
Joe Dusenberry (Chair, Des Moines Airport Advisory Committee): No, but I’ll just note for the record — we’ve got Barton DeLacy, myself, Steve Reagan, and our Community Development Director, Rebecca Deming, here tonight.
Davis: And also for the record, joining us: our Interim City Manager Bob Larson — I think he’s still doing elevator duty downstairs — and Liz Stead, who is the City of Burien’s Community Development Director and our SEPA compliance officer. She will also be available for this meeting. And Nathan Hawthorne, our staff liaison. Thank you very much.
Just quickly around the table, so we put names with faces: Brian Davis, Vice Chair, presiding officer of the Burien Committee. Barton DeLacy, on the Des Moines Committee. Jeff Harbaugh, Burien Airport Committee.
Sara Moore (Mayor of Burien / Chair, Burien Airport Committee): Sarah Moore, Mayor of Burien, Burien Airport Committee Chair. I was catching a stray dog — that’s why— [laughter] Yeah, there’s always something.
Davis: Emily [Inlhood], Airport Committee. Rebecca Deming, Des Moines Community Development Director. Lewis Tracy, Burien Airport Committee. Steve Reagan, Des Moines Airport Committee. Karen Valoria, Burien Airport Committee. And Joe Dusenberry, Des Moines Airport Committee.
And Bob Larson is now with us.
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SAMP Presentations to City Councils — Recap
Davis: Let’s start. Within the last few days, both the Des Moines City Council and the Burien City Council have heard presentations on the airport expansion plan now under SEPA review. Joe, would you like to start with how things went?
Dusenberry: We had a full council there, listened to the program — you’ve all seen the program. And then we had a, I’d say, mildly effective question-and-answer session. I think it’s kind of a failure on my part — we didn’t really get our council prepped enough to understand which questions were the most important ones. But they did ask a couple of questions, and we got the canned responses. The presenter was Dave Kaplan.
Davis: Dave Kaplan, local government relations — same as here, who was here last night at City Hall. Mayor, would you mind recapping that?
Moore: Yeah, we got the same presentation, I imagine, about the SAMP and the Port’s need to expand, and how the SAMP is going to fulfill the on-the-ground needs of people as the number of flights expands. And then we were prepped with a lot of questions from the airport committee. We did ask them — they ranged from ultrafine particles to future expansion planning to compensation, kind of the whole gamut. We got fairly fuzzy answers. The answers ranged from “why don’t you ask that at one of the listening sessions,” to “I can’t answer that right now,” to “that’s not going to happen” — which was the possibility of a fourth runway.
Davis: Yeah, he called the rumor of a fourth runway a myth. If I may — Emily and Jeff, you were also in the house last night. Any impressions to share?
Davis: There were a couple of things that stood out to me. One was — we have asked, going back to the NEPA process — we’re very concerned as a city about what happens when they open up SR 509 through to I-5. That’s going to be tens of thousands of additional vehicles a day running through a four-mile corridor through Burien. And, as we discussed last week, the Port’s position is that there would actually be a net reduction in emissions and pollution, because of a net reduction in vehicle miles traveled — instead of trucks going up over the I-5 hill, they’ll come on the inside route. And Councilmember Garcia said, “How are the people that live in Burien along 509 supposed to take that as anything other than a slap in the face?” And Dave said, “Well, that’s something you should ask at one of the open houses.”
There was another question having to do with what we discussed last week — the economic analysis that was done for airport-related employment for the six airport-adjacent cities. Burien’s share of that is absolutely abysmal. Dave questioned my interpretation of the data, but it seemed pretty clear to me, and he kind of blew that off.
And then the one that was kind of interesting to me was the whole notion of direct compensation to the airport cities, as was recommended in a consultant study done for the legislature almost 30 years ago. Dave declined to answer that question, indicating it might somehow be related to ongoing discussions between the Port of Seattle and the appellants of the FAA’s decision on the NEPA application. We are not privy to the ins and outs of what’s going on there, but I just thought that was interesting. Anything else I’m missing?
Moore: All I would say is, from my perspective, the goal was to make sure the Port heard that the City of Burien — the City Council — was not happy. And I think we accomplished that.
[Unidentified speaker, likely Emily Inlhood]: Can I just say — I was zoomed in and listened to that part of the meeting, and I thought the council looked so prepared. The questions were so in-depth, and it really made him look — he was flailing, I thought. We didn’t get any kind of answers. So I thought you guys did a really great job with the questions and the delivery, and just keeping them on their toes. We’re not playing around anymore, and I think he got that idea.
Davis: Yeah, there were actually a couple of times he referred to START. There were a couple of questions about elements of the SAMP, and he said, “Well, you know, the City of Burien belongs to START,” and there were some things about these issues that actually washed through START.
Dusenberry: What he was referring to — there were some issues from the federal legislative agenda that were taken to Washington and did in fact get enacted into legislation. And they will keep referring to that. Those things may prove to be valuable at some time long after I’m dead, because it’s up to the FAA to do some studies and then see where that goes. It isn’t that they’re bad things, but the timing is not immediate, to put it mildly. And the question on these issues was: is the Port prepared to step up and take a more aggressive leadership role in solving these problems?
Moore: I just want to say, as a councilperson — I don’t think the six of us could have come up with those questions on our own in the time that we had. And if you watch a meeting and you’re disappointed at the questions or the delivery, keep in mind that everybody’s multitasking a lot. It helped enormously to have that prep work and that homework. I don’t think we would have come through without those questions.
Davis: One more thing, and then we can move on to the nuts and bolts. We’ve got a bunch of stuff coming up these next few days. Probably want to figure out whose boots go on which ground.
I have, over the time I’ve been on the committee, developed a sense that with the Port there’s kind of — I’ll call it an institutional arrogance. They look at things a certain way and don’t seem very willing to consider anybody else’s point of view. So you wind up with Dave’s discussion last night about how there’s a 60-day comment period, and that’s twice as much as state law requires — kind of like, “We’re doing you guys a favor.” But our reality is that they had years to put this thing together, and we’re being given 60 days to review thousands of pages of at times highly technical documents, and there doesn’t seem to be any sympathy or understanding of what it’s like from our end. And when I talk, as I do all the time, about changing the relationship between the airport cities and the Port of Seattle, that’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about.
Dusenberry: Well, Brian, I’d argue they know exactly what they’re doing with that. They know 60 days isn’t enough. They know exactly what they’re doing. Remember, they’re not addressing us when Dave makes those presentations — they’re addressing a much broader audience, perhaps not as deep into this as we are.
Davis: Sure. Emily?
Emily Inlhood (Burien Airport Committee): I want to echo everyone else’s impressions. The only other thing I would add is we had some voices come through public comment, including some folks with lived experience. One person said, “I live in Burien but I work outside under the flight path.” And I think those — we’ve talked about this — collecting those stories as a way to humanize the more technical piece of it is really important. Whatever we can do as committee members to activate the communities we’re part of, and we can start using some of these community open houses to build on that.
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Public Hearing Petition
Inlhood: But first — this came up in our joint meeting last week in Des Moines — the possibility of inducing the Port to hold a public hearing on the expansion plan, on their draft environmental impact statement. State law: there are a number of ways you can do this. State law allows for circulation of a petition — 50 signatures of people who live within the Port’s jurisdiction, which is basically King County. 50 signatures will do it. And we’ve actually started a little petition drive here. If anybody hasn’t had a chance to sign it, see me before you leave.
The other thing is that the two municipalities involved — Bob, would you share on that?
Bob Larson (Interim City Manager, Burien): Sure. I’ll just mention, though, that last night staff captured the Council’s questions — we’re going to get those submitted formally into the record. Anything that was publicly stated by private individuals, I can’t take those. They’ve got to submit them by themselves. I want to make sure that that’s happened.
I have exchanged messages with my counterpart in Des Moines. They said they’re on board to submit a request as well. Our council last night had a concurrence that they wanted the [public hearing request] submitted. We’re on our way to getting it done. I’m waiting on Des Moines — I think it’s better if we submit separate requests rather than a dual request between two agencies, just to make sure there’s no doubt about it. I’m working it out with Katherine. We’ll get it done this week.
Davis: Thank you. And we’re up against it — the law states the deadline is Friday, and Friday is a holiday. So we’ve got to—
Larson: We’ll get it in either tomorrow, or I’ll work until Thursday night if needed. We’ve got our letter ready. I’m just waiting — when I get a copy of theirs tomorrow, we’ll get it done. I’m confident in that.
Davis: Thank you. The bigger issue is getting petition signatures before [the deadline].
Dusenberry: Yeah, I think we can.
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Community Events & Petition Collection
Davis: Which brings us to some of the stuff going on around this. Tomorrow night, at Glacier Middle School in SeaTac from 5:30 to 7, a number of community organizations led by the Seattle-Tacoma Airport Community Coalition for Justice are holding basically a SEPA prep event for people interested in going to the Port open houses — being a little bit better prepared than walking in with all these exhibits and not knowing where to go or what to say. That will be tomorrow evening at Glacier Middle School from 5:30 to 7.
In terms of petition capture — I would expect we’ll probably get our 50 tomorrow night — but there’s one more opportunity: an air filter giveaway here at City Hall from 2 to 6 on Thursday. If we can staff that for at least a couple of hours, those are places where we can not only get petition signatures, but make people aware of what’s going on and our desire to get more community members involved.
[Unidentified speaker]: Is it appropriate to collect petitions at that event? Are people going to feel pressured, meeting them at the door?
Moore: I think that’s going to lead to an impression that these two events are somehow tied.
[Unidentified speaker]: Right — “We’ll give you this if you sign.” Yeah, okay. We hear the concern.
Davis: Where physically is the giveaway? Is it inside chambers?
[Unidentified]: Downstairs, I think. Last time it was in chambers.
Davis: There was a pretty good line at the last event. I can see a scenario where somebody walks the line and says, “Hey, would you—” but I don’t think we could do that.
Moore: I think this is about getting people air filters. Let’s leave that alone.
Davis: Agreed. But perhaps if there’s another message we want to give folks about what’s going on with the SEPA process, we can do that.
[Discussion of outreach materials — the Port has mailed a large postcard; question of whether the SeaTac Coalition has additional materials]
Rebecca Deming (Des Moines Community Development Director): I could probably, by end of day Monday, put a flyer together for our joint public meeting on July 14th. I just won’t have anything by Thursday. Something that talks about that joint meeting — that’s our event, so I can work on that. Highlighting the URL to find out about Port comment opportunities, and a message about how important it is to provide comment. At a minimum, the Des Moines SAMP website has the link to the SAMP and the date and time of the joint meeting.
Davis: Let’s get that out there. It’s July 14th at 6 p.m. And it will occur where? Here?
Deming: Yes, here, and Des Moines is also working with our comms folks.
Davis: This is something we haven’t discussed publicly — who would feel comfortable explaining what the purpose of that meeting will be, what the format will be?
Deming: We haven’t quite finalized a lot of that. What Des Moines did for NEPA — and we’ll probably do something similar — is a PowerPoint presentation explaining basically what SEPA is, who’s doing it (not the cities — the Port), and how people can comment. Last time we had a sample letter for people to use to write comments. We hired a consultant for that. I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that for SEPA, but we’re hoping that once we see comments from our three-city consultants, we can draft something — it just depends on timing. We’re hoping to do a presentation, then allow people to come and speak so we can all hear concerns. We made clear those concerns wouldn’t go directly to the Port, but if individual cities wanted to incorporate anything into their city letters, we could hear if there was anything we missed.
[Unidentified]: I think we had also talked about having a station set up where people could write comments right then and there, and we could take responsibility for getting those into the Port.
[Unidentified]: It would be great if we could identify people — particularly folks who live under the flight path — who might be willing to step up and speak, for instance, at a Port Commission meeting, to talk about the impact of their lived experience. We have a couple of folks, but we need more. We need more people who can get out there and tell that story, because it’s really powerful.
Davis: Nate, just to circle back on the petitions — if people don’t want to do the air purifier event on Thursday, Thursday is also the Farmers Market and a World Cup watch party, all happening right here. So that’s a great idea.
[Unidentified]: I failed to mention earlier — I believe the Mayor brought this up last week — our request from the City of Burien, and also from [Plain Sight], is to request that the public hearing be held locally — at a school or somewhere like that — not down at the Port at Pier 69. That’s not community of interest for them anyway.
Davis: Do the petitions have to be delivered to Port headquarters by a certain time?
[Unidentified]: Close of business Thursday. They think they’re officially closed on Friday.
Davis: I wouldn’t trust Monday, Saturday, or Sunday either. So Thursday.
[Discussion of delivery logistics — need to contact Port to arrange someone to accept the petition, similar to how the city handles petition deliveries]
Davis: Before we get too far — who would be willing to spend a couple of hours collecting petition signatures at the Farmers Market on Thursday?
[Discussion: Farmers Market opens at 10 a.m. Discover Burien has a tent at the head of the street at 152nd. Volunteers can work near it without formally being in the tent — no booth fee needed. Plan: collect signatures 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., then hand-carry petitions downtown Thursday afternoon. Goal: bring a contingent, get pictures.]
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SAMP Open Houses — Coverage Plan
Davis: More boots on other ground. We’ve got the SAMP public open houses starting Monday:
– Monday, June 23 — Glacier Middle School, 6–8 p.m.
– Tuesday, June 24 — Mount Rainier High School, 6–8 p.m.
– Thursday, June 26 — Wildwood Elementary School, Federal Way, 6–8 p.m. (on 300th Street, toward Dash Point)
– Saturday, June 27 — Gregory Heights Elementary, noon–2 p.m.
And the Port Commission meets at noon on Tuesday the 23rd at the conference center at the airport — mezzanine level, on the far end from Alaska. They validate parking.
[Note: The Glacier Middle School event tomorrow (Wednesday) is separate — that’s the community prep event, not a Port open house.]
[Emily raises a process question: will there be a presentation from Liz or the consultants to help members understand what they’re actually reading?]
Deming: That’s what we’re trying to do on July 14th — as best we can. We’re kind of winging it right now. One of the reasons we put the technical briefing at the end was because when we did it before the Port presentations in the past, it felt almost like a rebuttal to our own stuff. This time we wanted to hear what the Port is saying first.
Davis: Would you be able to refresh us on the dates and times?
[Recap: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday open houses 6–8 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.–noon. Port Commission Tuesday noon at airport conference center.]
Davis: Back to your process question, Emily. Joe and I are in agreement — the material we use to engage people at the Port open houses are the questions we drafted for our respective city councils. We can combine those lists and provide them to everybody here.
[Unidentified]: If we go up to a specific individual with a question — it doesn’t get reported or anything, does it?
Davis: No, but I think at this point part of our goal is to make Port staff and the commissioners know that we’re paying attention. And if they get a little uncomfortable over that, so be it.
[Unidentified]: Can I clarify — they are accepting official public comments at those meetings?
Davis: They are. But they have to be done in a certain way. There’s a specific section for comments, versus asking questions at each station. I will go — at least to the Gregory Heights event — and ask the question about SR 509 at whatever the appropriate station is. I want an answer about that.
I think it’s very important that people who come to give public comment actually get to the place where they’re supposed to — so that nobody walks away thinking, “I talked to an employee, that counts as public comment, I can go now.” One of the things we can do is serve as ambassadors.
Davis: So, Rebecca — would you be able to send out details on when and where these meetings are? Coverage plan:
– Monday (Glacier Middle School): Sarah and Emily
– Tuesday (Mount Rainier High School): Steve and Joe
– Thursday (Wildwood, Federal Way): [volunteer from committee]
– Saturday (Gregory Heights): [to be confirmed]
– Tuesday Port Commission (noon): Barton
Davis: It would be interesting to see if any Port Commissioners show up at the open houses. At a previous event at Seahurst Elementary, there were name tags out for Port Commissioners just in case. Nobody showed up that time. But keep an eye on the name tag table — if any disappear, and you know who they are, make an approach and speak to them.
Davis: And they have cookies. It’s your tax money — don’t feel bad about eating their food.
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Reaching Out to Port Commissioners Directly
Davis: Speaking of the Port Commission — I made a public comment at our council meeting last night about this. I know that contact with Port Commissioners is not an official SAMP comment. However, as Commissioner Calkins mentioned a couple of weeks ago, and as Dave Kaplan mentioned here last night, the Port Commission will vote on all of these projects — up or down. And one of the things that happens in this process is that the commissioners are very well isolated by staff.
I think we need to start putting pressure in the form of: “Hey, we’re not happy about the way this is going, and you’re going to be asked to vote on this.” They are the commissioners for a public agency answerable to the voters — including everybody in this room. I think it would be a huge mistake not to start reaching out to individual commissioners, emailing them, saying, “Look, you’ve got us riled up down here, and we would very much like the courtesy of some consideration.” Let them know we’re there.
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Broadening Community Engagement
Inlhood: I’ve got lots of questions. I brought this up at our last joint meeting — how do we bring in more institutions, more voices? I have an email in draft form ready to go to the school board and Dr. Duran, but I don’t know if I’m the best person to send it. I don’t know if that should come from Bob or the mayors, but I think formally inviting them in and saying, “Hey, this affects you too,” is important.
I’m also thinking about nursing homes and other vulnerable facilities that were on that list and don’t currently have noise mitigation — things covered in the SAMP’s affected communities chapter. There are some churches, the Boulevard Park Library that just went through a rebuild, and they don’t have noise mitigation. I want to invite those institutions into this conversation. We’ve got more than two libraries here.
[Unidentified]: Send me the superintendent’s contact. I’ll send you my draft.
[Unidentified]: [A contact] said she had been talking to somebody at the [Highline] school district and was going to reach out to them about it. They said they were interested in participating.
Davis: Is this an appropriate time for somebody in this room to draft a letter to our local digital media — the B-Town Blog and the Highline Journal — basically a call to action for people to come show up at these events and engage?
[Unidentified]: An editorial piece? Just a letter to the editor. “Hey, it’s go time.”
[Unidentified]: I think that’s a possibility. Though I think they’re covering it anyway — Highline Journal and B-Town Blog have already written stories about it. If we do a letter to the editor, is there a different hook?
[Unidentified]: A different hook. Maybe we have a different hook after July 14th.
Deming: Rebecca — Catherine’s city manager email blast, I think, is pretty effective. Succinct, easy to follow. Is that somewhere we could highlight this?
[Unidentified]: It goes out on Fridays. She’s planning on putting something out this Friday.
[Unidentified]: Include information about the meeting too.
Dusenberry: I would encourage these two airport committees to have a letter signed by both chairs — and possibly the mayor joining as committee chair — especially for letters to the editor. It shows the community you’re doing things for them.
Davis: That’s a great suggestion. I just want to be sure whether I’m speaking for myself, for the council, or for the airport committee. I think the airport committee could vote to authorize this pretty easily if we wish to. I have not specifically run it through Council, so I can’t say Burien City Council supports this. Would it be less ambiguous if I signed it as Vice Chair?
[Unidentified]: The key is you’re not asking them to do anything specific other than get involved — “Here’s your opportunity. Show up at these meetings, learn about what’s going on.” It’s not really asking for anything more specific than that.
Davis: Yeah. Let’s talk offline — sooner the better. End of the week.
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Communications Update
Davis: What are we missing? Actually — our Communications Director, Devin Chikras, is on Zoom as an attendee. Nate, would you mind promoting Devin to panelist? Devin, I’m sorry to put you on the spot — is there anything you’ve got to add to this mix?
Devin Chikras (City of Burien Communications & Public Engagement Manager): No problem. We didn’t miss anything big.
Hello, everybody. I’m Devin Chikras, the City’s Communications and Public Engagement Manager. Proud to serve alongside our fellow staff members on this joint three-city committee.
A quick update: we are planning for the July 14th joint three-city open house meeting. Location confirmed — it will be in chambers, downstairs, at 6 p.m. We are still working on the details.
I heard there was a request for a flyer, and so while we’ve been talking here, I’ve been working on that flyer — and some other digital resources. That will help supercharge the effort this week. I’m hoping to finish it, get some consensus from the team tomorrow, and make sure everything is ready for prime time. My plan is to print out a whole bunch of these and stuff them in the flyer wall downstairs by the elevator — all those little acrylics — so folks can come grab as many as they need. I’ll also email a digital copy. So if you’re headed to the Farmers Market or to City Hall for the air purifier event, you can just pull a few off the wall and use them for outreach. That’s the plan as of right now. I’m staying for the rest of the call if there are any other questions.
Davis: Excellent. Thank you very much. That’d be great to have flyers.
[Unidentified]: Devin, again, where are you going to put those?
Chikras: Where you went to the elevator — the broken elevator — downstairs there’s a wall full of flyers where you push the button. All those little acrylics in that wall. I’ll print out scads of these and just shove them in all of the acrylics, so folks can come and grab as many as they need. Community members coming for any of the three or four events happening at the same time can also have access — or the library.
Davis: Thank you, Devin.
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START Presentation to Port Commission
Davis: Is there anything else, or are we at a point where we can wrap up?
[Unidentified]: I’ll send an email tomorrow summarizing this to the committee — with the dates and all that.
Davis: Thank you. And Rebecca just sent something out. Perfect.
One thing — Karen called me last week, outraged at the presentation on START that Andreas and everyone was making to the commissioners. I haven’t watched it yet. If it was like last year’s, I know how it went. I urge everybody to get online and hear how they represent START.
[Unidentified]: Is that something that could be sent around?
[Unidentified]: Yeah, just if you need your blood pressure raised. That’s not actually my problem. [laughter]
Davis: The one thing I will say — at least in their memo to the Executive Director, I don’t know if it made it into the live presentation to the Commission, but in their memo they did acknowledge that they had to scuttle START Day in Olympia because two cities refused to sign on to the Port’s legislative agenda. So it wasn’t just one big campfire song. And they also acknowledged that the issue of unanimity in decisions was a difficulty for reforming START.
We’ll see where they go with that. There have been some initial conversations about the consensus issue. We’ve raised that we don’t think much of it. We don’t know how to get around it, but that’s going to have to be a conversation in the steering committee — “Okay, we can agree on all these things, but if the Port doesn’t like them, they can say no.”
[Unidentified]: Well, you can say no, too, will be the response. But maybe — maybe we have just a little opportunity here to get a wedge in where they might be willing to change their attitude on some of this. I don’t know. You saw what I saw.
Dusenberry: Well, they brought the roundtable structure to us. All you have to do is go down the roster and you can see how they’re organized. We are the outlier. Of all the impact airports around the country, none of their roundtables operate like ours does.
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Closing Remarks
Davis: There is one thing — if we could count this as the pause that Sarah suggested we take. Emily, you said something in a meeting last week about how one of the things that’s important is to give members of our community some hope. Something to hang on to. Something to help them believe that the efforts they make in this endeavor are going to be worthwhile. It’s not green fuel. No.
In the three-plus years that I’ve been involved in this committee — where we started and where we are now — I mean, we’re light years. It’s still rough. We’re sitting here kind of making it up as we go along and it ain’t always pretty. We lack the polish of a professionally organized agency like the Port of Seattle. Yeah — you get what you pay for.
But the thing is, if you look at the fact that we are sitting here in this room trying to get this sorted out — I am so impressed by the efforts of our professional staff. And there are things, particularly having to do with the NEPA and the SAMP process, that we don’t know about, but I know there’s a lot of work going on out of our line of sight that is meaningful and powerful. And I know that everybody who is involved in this is working their backsides off for our cities and our people. There is momentum here. There is a shared commitment now that did not exist three years ago when I first started.
And the thing that I think we can tell our people is: we’re out here battling for you. Help us battle. We would love your help with that.
I think one of the things the Port misses every time they speak about this is that they say, “52 million people went through our facility last year.” Well, all 52 million of them, before they got to the airport, had to go through one of our communities. And while they were in our communities, they were our responsibility — to get them to the airport safely and out again. It’s our police departments, our first responders. We’re responsible for those people.
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Public Comment
Davis: Anything else? There’s nothing else to come before us — oh, we need public comment.
[Unidentified]: Oh, hold on.
Davis: You’re right about that. Let’s just open it up. We have two people in the waiting room. I had already spoken to our guest here, and she did not have any desire to speak.
[In-person guest]: No.
Davis: For those online — if you’d like to comment, please raise your hand.
[Pause — no online commenters]
Davis: Okay, I guess we’re good. Thank you, Mayor, for that reminder.
Our next regular meeting of the Burien Airport Committee will be July 21st here at 6 p.m. If there is no other business to come before us at this moment, we stand adjourned.
[Others]: Thank you. Thanks for inviting us.
[Meeting adjourned — approximately 5:58 p.m.]