City Beat
WG residents frustrated with airport violations, enforcement
Ombudsman and liaisons trying to respond to public
By Kate Carter
Many Willow Glen residents say they are fed up with airplane noise overhead, especially during nighttime hours, and are frustrated that the city and Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport aren't making it go away.
City and airport staff say the residents aren't the only frustrated ones.
"We'd love it if they wouldn't" break the airport's nighttime takeoff and landing curfew," said Marina Dyke, one of the airport's three community liaisons. "We'd be looked at as a good neighbor."
The airport is taking steps to develop better relationships with its neighbors, and Dyke's position is just one recent example. Under encouragement from San Jose District 6 City Councilman Ken Yeageræwho was chairman of the city's Airport Curfew Monitoring Committee before he was elected to officeæthe airport has created the airport neighborhood liaison positions to respond to neighbor concerns, as well as hired an ombudsman, Cathy Gaskell, to encourage airlines to respect the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. (in some cases, 11:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.) curfew.
But they cannot do what residents would most like them to do--impose fines or other consequences on the airlines and individuals who violate the curfew without good reason or who otherwise disturb neighborhoods' peace.
Dyke, Gaskell and other city, airport and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials tried to explain their limitations to about 20 Willow Glen residents at an April 18 meeting at Willow Glen Elementary School.
The meeting was a follow-up to a November meeting at which about 75 residents expressed their concerns about airplane noise and their frustration at the city's lack of response to their complaints.
Dyke said the earlier meeting was supposed to address flight patterns and demonstrate to residents that airplane traffic from three major airports in close proximity--San Jose, San Francisco International Airport and Oakland International Airport--prevented pilots from entirely avoiding flying at low elevation or turning over residential areas like Willow Glen. However, neighbors weren't looking for explanationsæjust answers.
"It became more of a noise meeting," Dyke said. "We intended it to be more of an educational meeting."
Yeager asked the team to hold a follow-up meeting, and the group developed a new format, which Dyke said was intended to better respond to the residents' concerns. At the April 18 meeting, those attending were split into five groups to address five different topics--curfew monitoring, community outreach, flight patterns, visual approaches and monthly noise reports--for 15 minutes each.
And while the group did inform the participants that the airport has limited control over the planes--planes in the air are under the control of the FAA--it didn't address the neighbors' hopes for solutions to the noise and curfew violations.
Dyke said the group had wanted to have a representative from the city attorney's office at the meeting to address concerns, but was unable to arrange it.
She did tell The Willow Glen Resident, however, that the airport and the city cannot force the airlines to comply with the curfew or impose any penalties for violations. San Jose's curfew was created and implemented in 1984 without enforcement provisions. Then, in 1990, the FAA created a law prohibiting airports from expanding their curfew laws beyond those already in place.
"Our hands are pretty much tied, because it's a federal law," Dyke said.
However, Yeager, San Jose District 3 City Councilwoman Cindy Chavez and San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales are working with the San Jose city attorney to find ways of working around the 1990 FAA law to impose penalties for violations.
But as one Willow Glen resident and pilot who attended the meeting pointed out, with so many airports nearby and so many airplanes in the sky, one must expect to hear airplane noise in exchange for the convenience of having so many flying options.
To get more information about the airport and its community relations, call its hotline, 408.501.0979, or email communityinput@sjc.org.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
