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On 8-3-99 the CAC did nothing. They made two motions One to recommend accepting the LAWA stage 2 jet limits and the second to reject to the same limits and call for more stringent limits
BOTH FAILED with the anti noise and the pro-noise airport groups voting together to reject accepting the LAWA limits
The Rejection of LAWA and the call for more strident limits was on favored only by the few anti noise members of the CAC
A pack of rich brats and their deafening private jets are casting San Fernando Valley neighborhoods into noise hell, and megawealthy Mayor Dick's letting it happen.
There is simply no excuse for what occurred at a public hearing last week, when city officials were supposed to approve a plan for getting rid of deafening Learjets and Gulfstream jets that have flocked to the once-sleepy Van Nuys airport, turning a patch of the San Fernando Valley into an unlivable hellhole.
The plan itself is a bad joke for the 250,000 to 350,000 Valley residents who live beneath the screaming jets, which are the multimillion-dollar toys of the ultrarich. Under the farcical "noise reduction" the airport commission unanimously approved and sent to the Los Angeles City Council, the jets will terrorize the Valley until the year 2010. By that time, areas near the jets' extensive flight patterns will be nothing more than slums-in-training.
Airport Commission President John Agoglia, a former NBC executive, treated the 250 residents who attended the hearing like it was a big, fat favor if they got to speak at the microphone. "I will keep these comments to two minutes each!" was the only honest thing I heard Agoglia say all night. Where does Mayor Richard Riordan find such little Neros to appoint to powerful city commissions? My mechanic could have handled the crowd with more courtesy.
But the real problem is all the lying and lying and lying. A decade ago, these noisy private jets -- known as Stage 2s -- were supposed to be forced out by the city council and Mayor Tom Bradley. Everybody agreed they were incompatible with human life. Indeed, they are discouraged at most airports, including Burbank, where they are heavily restricted, and Santa Monica, where they are banned. One of the Hollywood stars flying a screeching jet out of Van Nuys Airport is John Travolta. Another is Tom Cruise.
But then came the slimy lobbyists. In the late 1980s, they convinced Bradley and his gaseous sidekick, Chief Legislative Analyst Ron Deaton (an Orange County Republican who thinks slow growth is a form of bacteria), that it would be horrible to force out jet-leasing czars like Clay Lacy and the rich L.A. residents who had bought their very own Stage 2 jets. Campaign contributions flew into the wallets of City Hall politicians. And darned if the thundering jets were not only allowed to stay at Van Nuys, but to dramatically increase their numbers.
Today, about 50 Stage 2 jets are based at Van Nuys, and their 15,000 annual takeoffs and landings are ruining the peace in a vast swath of 70,000 to 100,000 homes and apartment units in Van Nuys, Encino, Sherman Oaks, and Granada Hills.
Nevertheless, the airport commission -- five "pro-growthers" who live nowhere near the airport -- voted to spread the communicable disease of neighborhood neglect, business-district tawdriness, and crime spawned by this noise pollution.
Stop the Noise, a coalition of 28 organizations representing 10,000 families, urged Valley residents to join its group. Said Gerald Silver, an Encino Homeowners Association leader, "Please join us at Stop the Noise, folks. These people (airport commissioners) are not your friends. They are not listening."
The most fascinating thing is why people like Riordan and Little Nero John Agoglia are not listening.It's not because -- as our foolish L.A. mainstream media harps -- the airport was there first. This is bullshit. In fact, the vast majority of homes were built long before 1965, when the modest airport was a quiet and decent neighbor. When noise suddenly overtook neighborhoods, there was no "slow growth" movement. Myopic business leaders ruled, and only very rich residents had the clout to stop ruinous growth such as the abandoned Beverly Hills Freeway and the idiotic Malibu Offshore Freeway.
As we now know, Mayor Tom Bradley didn't really relate to the Valley. While other cities restricted their local airports, Van Noise became the busiest general-aviation airport (such facilities do not service commercial airlines) in the nation, and then, in the world, with a landing or takeoff every few seconds. By 1985, noise-shattered neighborhoods were home to gangs, skyrocketing crime, bad schools, and what sociologists called "white flight."
The interesting question is: Why screw the Valley? The answer, in short, is: star worship. (There's a far spicier term for this.)
The really horrible noise from the airport comes not from small private planes, but from private jets favored by Hollywood movie stars, studio moguls, wealthy sightseers, and rich corporate and business types. For them, Los Angeles International Airport is not an option. At LAX, they might run into normal people while scurrying from the limo to the VIP lounge to await their private jet or first-class cabin.
As Michael Ross, vice president at Air Group charter -- which serves the wealthy -- recently told CNN's online magazine, Van Nuys is preferred because LAX and Burbank "are flooded with tourists, which businesses want to avoid." Yes, isn't it awful how airports are just flooded with that sort of person?
Then there's this insight from Mark Sullivan, who owns Skytrails, which charters obnoxiously loud helicopters. On the Van Nuys Airport Web site, he explains that Van Nuys is preferred over LAX because, for one thing, "it's only about 20 minutes to Beverly Hills, Century City, or Bel Air."
Naturally, I began to wonder how many of the rich who abuse the skies over the Valley are pals of Airport Commission President Agoglia or Mayor Riordan. I know a lot of them were pals of Tom Bradley's.
As a former NBC exec, Agoglia might know Jerry Perenchio, the billionaire head of Univision, the all-Spanish TV network. Univision's idiotic 1950s-era TV programming has not stopped Perenchio from building a huge fortune, part of which he uses to maintain his own personal Boeing 727, which he gleefully roars over the rooftops of thousands of San Fernando Valley residents, leaving a "noise footprint" that sends a huge rumble across a full 15 miles. The gilt-edged Perenchio is a good pal of Riordan's, who once insisted to me that Perenchio "is really just a nice, regular guy." Perhaps Dick was referring to Perenchio's digestive health. Because a guy who thinks it's acceptable to shake the homes of thousands of people to save himself from a little jostling at LAX is clearly not a "nice, regular guy."
Perenchio is not even the baddest of these spoiled brats. One of the worst is John Travolta, who regularly flies his deafening Stage 2 jets out of Van Nuys with his wife, Kelly Preston -- apparently he is oblivious to the thousands of children, elderly, and working stiffs whose lives he is disrupting. Among the other abusers are Larry Flynt, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and country singer Reba McEntire, who owns her own fleet of private jets. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman regularly fly their teeth-rattling Stage 2 jet over the roofs of Valley residents.
I don't know who first discovered that Van Nuys was welcoming Stage 2 jets in the face of bans elsewhere. Was it the movie stars or the corporate bigwigs who started this dreadful fad? The corporate goons make up 90 percent of the Stage 2 traffic at Van Nuys, according to Robert Bodine of the Mid-Valley Chamber of Commerce. Bodine tells me, "They really do not want to be identified by corporate name because it is a political problem now, and it is also not in their best interests to be involved by name because there have been threats."
Gosh, it must be scary to get threats. But since I have a list of many corporate names, from a 1995 to '97 study by Homeowners of Encino, I think it's time these companies were involved by name.
The executives of Merle Norman Cosmetics think their jobs are important enough to blast the Valley with a Stage 2 jet, as do the bosses at Viacom, Zenith Insurance, Anheuser-Busch, Yukaipa Management Co., Great Western Financial, J and R Investments International, Chastain Park Holdings, Guess?, and Tutor-Saliba. Others include Tenet Healthcare Corp., First Security Bank, Imp Inc., Oakmont Corp., and Litton Systems.
Las Vegas hoteliers naturally they think they, too, have the right to blast over the Valley. They include the honchos at the MGM Grand Hotel, the bosses at Hilton Hotels, and the execs at the Golden Nugget.
The worst of the rich abusers -- worse than Travolta or Perenchio -- is stinking rich Clay Lacy, the king of jet chartering. Jets owned by Lacy, who lives in the Encino Hills, comfortably outside the "noise footprints" of Stage 2 jets, account for one of every 10 Stage 2 takeoffs and landings. Lacy's clients are a heavily guarded secret.
Pleasing the greedy Lacy, who last year grossed $35 million, is one reason why the Department of Airports paid for a trumped-up "economic study" to show supposed economic devastation for the Valley if Stage 2 planes were banned. I asked a couple of economists to look over the study. They found it hilarious, because it did not measure the neighborhood upgrading, return of shops, and rise in property values that would occur if City Hall banned such jets.
Councilman Mike Feuer opposes the 2010 phaseout plan as a sham, as does Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, Senator Tom Hayden, and Congressman Brad Sherman. But I fear the sellouts will control the city council vote, just as they did 10 years ago when Tom Bradley buckled. The sellouts include council members Laura Chick and Hal Bernson. Chick was jeered and heckled by dozens of residents at last week's public hearing, when she glowingly praised the phaseout as "a true compromise."
Jim Nikla, who lives south of the airport, responded: "Ms. Chick seems to be a rubber stamp. I invite her to come to my backyard for a barbecue. I can't do that anymore, because you can't go outside at my house." One of Nikla's neighbors, Lance Paris, asked: "How can the financial interest of a half-dozen businesses hold the city of L.A. hostage?"
The answer, Mr. Paris, is that nobody on the airport commission or city council actually has to listen to these booming private jets -- they would have to listen to never-ending complaints if the city's richest folk lost their perks at Van Noise.
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