Airport debate revives council

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press January 31, 2001

By DON JERGLER
Valley Press Aerospace Writer

PALMDALE - The escalating debate over Southern California regional airports may have kicked up enough dirt to shake the dust from one of the Antelope Valley's most regal organizations.

The Palmdale Regional Advisory Council, a citizens group formed nearly 30 years ago, will meet for the first time in roughly two years to discuss its own future.

The council's Interim President Howard Brooks called the Feb. 15 meeting in the wake of a heated debate about plans released this month to expand Los Angeles International Airport.

Those plans, which mention Palmdale Airport, along with other outlying airports, drew ire from proponents of taking a regional development approach to address growing aviation demands on Southern California.

Some are looking to the development of Palmdale Airport to help solve aviation demands, projected to increase to 157 million air passengers regionally per year by 2020. Currently, 67 million passengers fly in or out of LAX each year.

Others wish to expand LAX and allow outlying airports such as the one in Palmdale to develop when the need for them arises as airlines begin to look to the areas based on population size and accessibility.

At the time of its creation, the advisory council was known as the Supporters of Palmdale Intercontinental Airport and was focused primarily on developing the 17,000 acres adjacent to the Palmdale Airport/Air Force Plant 42 facility.

After its name was changed, the group focused on bringing commercial air service to the Palmdale Airport/Plant 42 facility.

When the group met last, it had a few hundred members, said Brooks, who is also executive director for the Antelope Valley Board of Trade.

Brooks said the group stopped meeting regularly when the Palmdale Working Group was formed and took on many of the airport issues the council was addressing.

The Working Group is spearheaded by the city of Palmdale and the office of Los Angeles County 5th District Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, a die-hard opponent of LAX expansion.

Rent is still being paid from previously collected membership fees on the group's office at the Palmdale Airport, Brooks said, but he added that fees haven't been collected for a while.

Now that the airport issue is once again taking center stage within the community, it may be time to decide whether the group should reorganize or dissolve, Brooks said.

"I think that it needs to be picked up," Brooks said. "It sounds like maybe it's going to work again.

Larry Chimbole, one of the founders of Palmdale as a city and one of the advisory council's original members, said he supports keeping the group afloat.

"This organization has been really something that the Department of Airports had a little bit of respect for," he said. "I'm in favor of this organization maintaining the high profile that it had and the respectful position it held in the community."

Chimbole said he preferred not to say the organization was defunct for the past two years.

"I just say that it's been lying fallow for some time," he said.

According to Chimbole, the founder of the council was Cliff Rawson, who at the time was the executive director of the Antelope Valley Board of Trade. The group's first president was Ron Carter, whose family owned KAVL 610 AM radio and the Antelope Valley Bus Co., which later became the Antelope Valley Transit Authority.

The original dues were $5 per year, Chimbole said.

The group was patterned after the Supporters of the Ontario International Airport. That group still exists.

"We have a lot of work to do and we have the forces of the Department of Airports and the airlines wanting to centralize everything in one place," Chimbole said. "What we need to do is find kind of a middle ground."

Roger Persons, who runs Chapel of the Valley Mortuary, is also one of the original members.

He too supports keeping the group up and running.

"I think it's a valuable group made up of a lot of people here in the Antelope Valley," Persons said.

In the past, the group met once every quarter, he added.

"I anticipate that we will probably start on that again," he said. "I think there will be more interest from the simple standpoint that we have more interest from the people from Los Angeles than we've ever had before."

As for developing an airport in Palmdale, Persons said:

"It's something that's going to happen eventually. With the population increasing in this area, there's going to be more of a demand that it be placed here."

The meeting is scheduled for noon Thursday, Feb. 15, at the Palmdale Regional Airport Office near the corner of 25th Street East and Avenue P.