The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

City takes air cargo off its list of options

Unanimous council accepts the rest of the CAC report

By Mike de Give

The City Council last week did what vocal residents have been urging for more than a year--it declared air cargo an unacceptable use of Moffett Federal Airfield.

The new city policy may have no impact on the ultimate use of Moffett--NASA and the federal government will make the final decision about the airfield's future--but the 200 members of the standing-room-only audience were elated by the unanimous vote.

"It was fantastic news," said Alan Templeton, a member of Citizens for a Greater Sunnyvale, after the Nov. 25 meeting. "We accomplished everything we set out to accomplish--get the public hearing and get the City Council to go with the community."

The council came out officially against air cargo as part of a much broader motion to accept a report from the Community Advisory Committee--a group of Sunnyvale and Mountain View residents that met for more than a year to develop short-term scenarios to keep Moffett afloat. The facility, under the stewardship of NASA, loses $3.5 million a year. Leasing part of the field to air cargo companies such as Federal Express was the most controversial option for making up the deficit.

By a vote of 11-8, the CAC had recommended leasing to air cargo companies only if certain conditions were met, such as routing as many flights as possible over the bay and away from the airspace over Sunnyvale neighborhoods.

But before adopting the report as official city policy, the council shifted air cargo from the "conditionally acceptable" list of options to the "not acceptable" list.

The city of Mountain View adopted essentially the same policy last week by a vote to 6-1. Los Altos and Los Altos Hills recently passed resolutions against air cargo.

Councilman Jack Walker said the process and community dialogue had been slow and sometimes frustrating, but was glad that Sunnyvale and surrounding cities could now work with NASA on solutions rather than simply debating over air cargo.

Lobbyists hired by the city of Sunnyvale--who have already been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the city--will now be able to take positive solutions to Washington, councilmembers said.

"They can't go forward with negative options. Let's find the options we want to take, rather than the actions we don't want to take," Walker said.

The report adopted by the city makes it official Sunnyvale policy to work with NASA to achieve the community's desires; provide ongoing community input on airfield operations to NASA; assist the agency in identifying and implementing land use options; and seek assistance from businesses and residents to make those options a reality.

The city's staff will develop a study plan for the council by no later than February that summarizes a course of action for several possible uses for the airfield. The scenarios the council will consider urging NASA to pursue are: developing a commercial space products center; expanding the Ames Technology Commercialization Center; developing an information technology institute; building an astrobiology institute; creating an air and space center; promoting air shows; encouraging a research and development campus and light industrial park; using the land for a film studio; expanding the existing space camp; and adding some land to the San Francisco Bay Trail.

Councilman Stan Kawczynski opposed the option of using the airfield to develop commercial space products. He said any scenario that leaves runways intact at Moffett will be a threat to the city, since the infrastructure would be in place to allow more and more planes use the former naval base. A motion by Kawczynski to move commercial space products to the "not acceptable" list failed to win support from other council members.

Councilman Fred Fowler said he looks forward to working with NASA, and said it was a credit to the agency that they took the idea of air cargo off the shelf for a year-enduring a $3.5 million deficit--while surrounding communities debated the issue.

Councilmembers warned that the process if far from over. While four city councils are now united against air cargo, the communities must still convince NASA to pursue more acceptable uses of the facility. Moreover, the city of San Jose still has hopes of turning Moffett into an extension of its international airport and designating the airfield for air cargo flights.

"Don't go home and say 'We did it,' because there is more to come," Kawczynski said. "Whether this is good for us, we'll find out."

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, December 3, 1997.
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