The Airport Communities Podcast
Last week we looked back at how the Port of Seattle’s tree cutting, originally known as the Flight Corridor Safety Program, led to a short-lived public interest about the SAMP, including the creation of a number of local groups, and the development of all the Port’s current community grant programs.
Housekeeping: We mention recent meetings of the Burien Airport Committee, roundtables in New York City, Europe, KCIA, and the Part 150 – all the events you can follow by subscribing.
Feedback: We hit another ‘record’ of podcast downloads. We address complaints about use our “Bullshit Meter”. The term has become common parlance in academia to describe junk papers. Unfortunately, even in the hard sciences, misinformation has become a serious problem. We don’t do it for shock value.
First, phrases like ‘myth buster!’, or ‘misleading’ have lost any impact for most people. A major reason that certain myths like Second Airport refuse to die is because no one says clearly and firmly, “this is a 10/10 on the bullshit meter.”
Second, the reason it is a ‘meter’ is that many of these issues are not clear cut ‘true’ or ‘false’. More often than not, the answer is somewhere in the middle. The Port has often been particularly challenging in this regard.
For every concern the public raises, the Port has a blizzard of very logical-sounding explanations to demonstrate not only why nothing can be done, but also, how hard the Port is working on our behalf.
We fear that we may be inadvertently adding to the confusion. Even trying to describe systems as complex as the airport and the Port can quickly become overwhelming and can lead to a sense of futility.
Among the ongoing distractions, which we rate at least an 8/10 on the Bullshit Meter are
a. What the Port can legally offer in terms of relief, and also
b. Whether or not they can even afford to do so!
After all, The airport suffered a 50% drop in operations during COVID. They are doing a great many very expensive projects. Currently they are concerned that ‘tariffs’ will put their shipping operations at risk. They are constantly asking us to help them lobby the State and the Feds for more money which creates the impression that they need help! None of that is true.
Episode: Host JC delves into the hyper-technical topic of how airports are financed, debt (including the property tax levy), and why almost none of it matters for us.
To do that, we begin by mentioning Rube Goldberg – a name you may have heard, but not remember. Goldberg’s cartoons began appearing in print about the same time the Port of Seattle was created in 1911. The cartoons poked fun at modern life, depicting overly-complicated machines, with lengthy and ridiculous explanations (the longer and more ridiculous, the better.) The punchline was that it was all unnecessary nonsense.
Around 2010, after the Third Runway and decades of complaints about under-performance and corruption, the Port began a meteoric record of growth, performance, and better PR. These improvements have been so amazing that even old-timers don’t seem to notice how much better they have handled recent ‘catastrophes’ like COVID or minor scandals like the International Arrivals Facility. Most importantly, the Port has already financed the SAMP with the full support of the airlines, through various contracts which insure that the airport will always be properly financed.
But the one area where the Port still dramatically under-performs has been airport communities. Graded objectively graded as a grant provider, the Port performs terribly, with onerous requirements and high administrative costs – in many cases, never spending down the allocated funds. They insist that this is due to limits placed on them by the State constitution Gift of Public Funds (Article 8 and RCW53).
The reason we called this the Rube Goldberg Debt Experiment is that the Port already allocates the money. The ‘trick’ is getting you to stop paying attention to all the complexity and hand waving (Ep #2, the Casino) and focus on what has been right in front of you all along.
For whatever reason, the entire system is highly inefficient. But even that unnecessary complexity works to the Port’s advantage. The Port always obtains 100% PR value regardless of discounted community benefit.
In our STNI 2026 Legislative Agenda we talk about simple, voluntary reforms they can make to address all that, and easy changes to RCW 53 if they don’t.
2008 Port of Seattle probe exposes fraud, a “get-it-done culture”
2016 Flight Corridor Safety Program
2017 Airport Community Ecology Fund
2018 South King County Fund for airport relief
2020 South King County Fund expands to economic development
2023 South King County Fund/ACE closeout
2025 South King County Fund expands to South King County/Port Fund
2025 Washington Law Review – The Gift of Public Funds Bogeyman
To learn the rest of the story on each of these programs: stni.info/subscribe
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