Airport debate revives council

By DON JERGLER
Valley Press Aerospace Writer

The Palmdale Regional Adviso-ry Council, a citizens group formed nearly 30 years ago, will meet for the first time in roughly two years to discuss its own future.

The council's Interim President Howard Brooks called the Feb. 15 meeting in the wake of a heated debate about plans released this month to expand Los Angeles In-ternational Airport.

Those plans, which mention Palmdale Airport, along with oth-er outlying airports, drew ire from proponents of taking a regional de-velopment approach to address growing aviation demands on Southern California.

Some are looking to the devel-opment of Palmdale Airport to help solve aviation demands, pro-jected to increase to 157 million air passengers regionally per year by 2020. Currently, 67 million pas-sengers fly in or out of LAX each year.

Others wish to expand LAX and allow outlying airports such as the one in Palmdale to develop when the need for them arises as air-lines begin to look to the areas based on population size and acces-sibility.

At the time of its creation, the advisory council was known as the Supporters of Palmdale Interconti-nental Airport and was focused primarily on developing the 17,000 acres adjacent to the Palmdale Airport/Air Force Plant 42 facility.

After its name was changed, the group focused on bringing com-mercial air service to the Palmdale Airport/Plant 42 facility.

When the group met last, it had a few hundred members, said Brooks, who is also executive di-rector for the Antelope Valley Board of Trade.

Brooks said the group stopped meeting regularly when the Palm-dale Working Group was formed and took on many of the airport is-sues the council was addressing.

The Working Group is spear-headed by the city of Palmdale and the office of Los Angeles County 5th District Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, a die-hard opponent of LAX expansion.

Rent is still being paid from previously collected membership fees on the group's office at the Palmdale Airport, Brooks said, but he added that fees haven't been collected for a while.

Now that the airport issue is once again taking center stage within the community, it may be time to decide whether the group should reorganize or dissolve, Brooks said.

"I think that it needs to be picked up," Brooks said. "It sounds like maybe it's going to work again.

Larry Chimbole, one of the founders of Palmdale as a city and one of the advisory council's origi-nal members, said he supports keeping the group afloat.

"This organization has been really something that the Depart-ment of Airports had a little bit of respect for," he said. "I'm in favor of this organization maintaining the high profile that it had and the re-spectful position it held in the community."

Chimbole said he preferred not to say the organization was de-funct for the past two years.

"I just say that it's been lying fallow for some time," he said.

According to Chimbole, the founder of the council was Cliff Rawson, who at the time was the executive director of the Antelope Valley Board of Trade. The group's first president was Ron Carter, whose family owned KAVL 610 AM radio and the Antelope Valley Bus Co., which later became the Antelope Valley Transit Authori-ty.

The original dues were $5 per year, Chimbole said.

The group was patterned after the Supporters of the Ontario In-ternational Airport. That group still exists.

"We have a lot of work to do and we have the forces of the Depart-ment of Airports and the airlines wanting to centralize everything in one place," Chimbole said. "What we need to do is find kind of a mid-dle ground."

Roger Persons, who runs Chap-el of the Valley Mortuary, is also one of the original members.

He too supports keeping the group up and running.

"I think it's a valuable group made up of a lot of people here in the Antelope Valley," Persons said.

In the past, the group met once every quarter, he added.

"I anticipate that we will proba-bly start on that again," he said. "I think there will be more interest from the simple standpoint that we have more interest from the people from Los Angeles than we've ever had before."

As for developing an airport in Palmdale, Persons said:

"It's something that's going to happen eventually. With the popu-lation increasing in this area, there's going to be more of a de-mand that it be placed here."

The meeting is scheduled for noon Thursday, Feb. 15, at the Palmdale Regional Airport Office near the corner of 25th Street East and Avenue P.