Several community members attended the Tuesday, Aug. 19 Oneonta Common Council meeting to continue advocating against expansion plans at the Albert S. Nader Regional Airport.
For about 30 minutes, people shared various concerns with the council regarding an airport runway expansion plan. The plan has not been funded or planned, however the council approved a plan to clear trees at its meeting April 15.
Will Lunn, an Oneonta resident who has several years of work experience at the Oneonta airport, spoke toward the beginning of the petitioning session.
He said the project, specifically expanding the runway, is unnecessary. The 10 biggest corporate jet operators in the United States can all fly into the Oneonta airport with one of the airplanes in their fleets, he said, so runway length is not a key factor in economic advancement.
“There’s no benefit for the county,” Lunn said. “I don’t see any significant economic benefit to lengthening the runway. All I see is a bunch of trees getting knocked down in our beautiful upstate, upper-middle Otsego County, getting destroyed.”
John Paul Sweet, who has lived in Oneonta for more than 40 years, addressed the council.
He said clear cutting could cause surface water to run into the water supply and reservoir. Additionally, he said he has yet to hear about any increase in airport use demanding an expansion of this nature.
Local taxpayers cannot afford the “maintenance of this increased vast property,” he added, and that enrollment has gone down at both Hartwick College and SUNY Oneonta. He said he was concerned about how the community would make use of the expanded airport.
Jacey Chase, another speaker from Oneonta, echoed similar concerns about environmental impacts and changes to quality of life.
“Looking around, Oneonta really is a special place to be, it’s beautiful,” Chase said. “It’s a really great city. I fear for projects that are going to impact all of our quality of life and this beautiful landscape that we have, our drinking water, and really it comes down to our mental health, our long term health risks.”
Toward the end of the council meeting, once the petitioners had left, the council revisited the airport discussion. Kaytee Lipari Shue, D-Fourth Ward, said she had heard from residents that surveyors had been to their properties to do land assessments.
She said the impression she got from residents was that these actions felt “intimidating” or “heavy handed.”
For future communication with residents on behalf of the city, she said she wanted those activities to stop until the council could come to a conclusion about how the project should proceed.
“I’m making the request that we consider as a body pausing the activities until we can hear from the Airport Commission to determine any next steps that we want to take at our next meeting,” Lipari Shue said.
City Attorney David Merzig said nobody is doing anything on anyone’s property in the upcoming days and there has not been any activity recently. The work was done about a month ago, he added. Merzig said the city has contracts with engineers to “fulfill certain milestones.”
“You could ask the engineering firm if they’re doing anything on site of any kind tomorrow, I don’t think they are, but simply ask them,” Merzig said.
Michael Forster Rothbart, D- Seventh Ward, said that while he understood Lipari Shue’s point, the goal of the council should be “to collect information so that we can make an informed decision while being mindful of public hearing input.”
He said the best way to move forward would be to take in the information at the Airport Commission meeting Wednesday, Aug. 20, as currently the council does not have enough information to make a decision.
Don Mathisen, D- Eighth Ward, later asked whether the council had gotten involved in the application for the Federal Aviation Administration grant. After some back and forth about if the council had weighed in, City Clerk Kerri Harrington read aloud a resolution from May 6, confirming that the council approved the application for the grant.
An Airport Commission meeting is scheduled for 4 p.m. Aug. 20. in the City Hall council chambers.