Airport
Authority meeting
The board
of the Santa Ynez Valley Airport met in their regular monthly meeting on April
3. Attending were board Chairman
Willy Chamberlin, board President and Airport Manager Jim Kunkle, Secretary
Albert Margolis, Treasurer David Romero, and members Jeff Hecker and Tom
Petersen. Airport Operations
Manager Keegan Bailey attended the meeting.
Bailey,
in his Managers Report, noted that the mowing of weeds is progressing. Weed abatement around the airport
provides some key safety benefits, including fuel removal to prevent grass
fires and obstruction removal from overrun areas for aircraft safety.
Local
pilot and flight instructor John Fisher made a presentation to the board on a
proposal to paint a compass rose on the airport ramp or taxiway. The rose is a painted area that an
aircraft can taxi onto and is calibrated and marked with cardinal directions of
North, South, East, and West. This
area assists aircraft in verifying the accuracy of their magnetic and gyroscopic
compasses.
The rose,
as proposed, is a design that has been used at other airports. The 99s, a women’s aviation
organization in Santa Barbara, may be providing the artistic elbow grease for
the project, and the airport would provide the paint, said Kunkle. He suggested
that the local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association, Sport Aviators
Inc., come up with some designs specific to Santa Ynez Airport. Committees from the board and from
Sport Aviators will be meeting to discuss options.
During
public comments, discussion of an agenda item dealing with an ongoing public
hangar rules and regulations review dealt with concerns by hangar tenants that
letters sent to some of them contained language that made them feel they had
been threatened with default violations.
The
language of the regulations requires that the name on the hanger lease
agreement be exactly as it appears on the aircraft registration. In some cases, tenants have their
aircraft registered differently and felt the board was preparing to declare
them in default and try to evict them from hangers they have occupied for many
years.
Chairman
Chamberlin provided some breathing room for the tenants by proposing a motion
to delay any action on a default proceeding until the board has additional time
to discuss solutions with the affected hanger tenants. The motion passed.
Dave
Romero and Keegan Bailey are making progress on the clean up of equipment
including trailers and a truck that may contain a helicopter at the glider port
at the east end of the airport.
Bailey noted that the truck in question has not been registered since
2005.
The board
had other discussions on the updates for the conditional use permits in
progress, a maintenance update on hanger G-9, and a planned maintenance and
renovations on the airport building to provide handicap bathrooms.
The board
also discussed the proposed scope of an Emergency Operations Plan for the
airport. Romero said that he is
working with Bailey and will provide a report on the scope proposed for the
plan.
The board
concluded the open portion of the meeting with a report on continuing
negotiations with Granite Construction to find a solution to a problem with an
application of Brewer Cote to the airport ramp area. The initial application exhibited streaking, even though “Granite
really followed the procedure” for application, according to Kunkle.
The board
retired to closed session for discussion on the public hanger license
agreements and negotiations on Grant 11.
The next
meeting of the Airport Authority is scheduled for May 1.