Photo: Planes flying over nearby airports have long been a noisy nuisance for communities. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey recently firmed up a proposed structure for its roundtable, meant to handle noise mitigation and other airports-related issues. Photo Courtesy of Kurt Schlosser, Flickr.com.
Last week, Port Authority’s Airports Roundtable finally got off the ground at a meeting at Flushing’s York College.
After months of debate about the proposed structure of the roundtable, established to bring together concerned parties to address airport noise mitigation and other issues resulting from nearby airports, the group of approximately 100 attendees (three dozen of which were roundtable members representing various community boards, civic groups, and advocacy organizations) came together in earnest under the roof of one roundtable with two committees – one each for LGA and JFK. The original proposition by the PANYNJ had allocated one roundtable per airport, but the structure within each roundtable, who would participate, and where the seat of power would rest was discussed without resolve for months. In February, PANYNJ sent a letter to airport stakeholders outlining a new plan: there would only be one roundtable, composed of two committees, one for each airport. Still, no one was entirely satisfied.
The business at hand for the roundtable meeting on April 7 was to cut through the unproductive bickering and vote in a coordinating committee to establish by-laws and procedural standards.
Upon entrance, voting members were handed nomination ballots for chair, vice chair, and secretary, but after some discussion, it was determined that there should be an equal structure of two co-chairs and two co-vice chairs representing each of the two airports. Eastern Queens Alliance Chairwoman Barbara Brown was voted in as the JFK co-chair, while Queens Quiet Skies President Janet McEneaney was elected as the co-chair for LaGuardia.
“I’m really confident that something’s going to be done,” said Warren Schreiber, the new vice chair for LaGuardia. “This time around, everybody seemed determined to make it work. There was a good-faith effort.”
The Hempstead/JFK vice chair electee was Kendall Lampkin, and Richard Hellenbrecht, former president of the Queens Civic Congress was named secretary, a pivotal position coordinating between the two airport committees and the Port Authority.
Next, according to Schreiber, the coordinating committee will work from the ground up to establish the rules of the road, an executive structure, criteria for permanent positions, funding, and anything else necessary to move forward and actually manage the issue of noise mitigation.
By Eugénie Bisulco eugenie@theforumnewsgroup.com
