New Haven’s mayor, with a phalanx of staff members and officials, blew into Tweed-New Haven Airport to strafe East Haven officials over the longstanding fight over expansion of safety zones at the regional facility.
The disputed work, Mayor John DeStefano said at a press event at the airport Monday, is both mandated by the federal government and necessary for safety in the air and on the ground.
East Haven’s chief executive shot back, accusing New Haven DeStefano of “holding divisive press conferences denouncing the Town of East Haven” over expansion concerns. The East Haven mayor, April Capone Almon, had a staff member at the airport present at the event, handing out a rebuttal, blaming New Haven for the turbulence over the airport.
At the hastily called news conference in the airport’s main ticketing area, DeStefano said safety is at issue. “This is about improvements necessary for the safety of people in the air and on the ground in both East Haven and New Haven,” he said in a prepared statement.
At issue is a plan to build a 400-foot safety zone, using land pictured, at the end of the main 5,200-foot runway at Tweed, a plan mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration. The plan calls for moving Dodge Avenue, a widely used street.
DeStefano, speaking with reporters after his talk, said he was moved to call the press conference after reading a deposition given by East Haven Mayor April Capone Almon in a federal court case involving airport work.
“I must tell you that I was taken aback by some of your statements in the deposition,” DeStefano wrote to Almon on Sept. 30.
“Frankly, your statements in the deposition that the meetings were, as you put it, ‘just a smoke screen for the Airport Authority taking some time to get its ducks in a row…’ does not reflect the facts,” he said in the letter, a copy of which was provided to reporters. He said New Haven residents also were impacted by the work. The airport straddles the border between the two communities.
In a telephone interview after the press conference, Almon accused DeStefano of holding meetings about the airport without her. Asked to comment on the news conference and the reference to the meetings in DeStefano’s letter, she called the assertions “not true.” New Haven officials “set up several meetings without me…purposely not involving me,” she said.
In another telephone interview, DeStefano said her version is inaccurate.
Another sticking point between the two: DeStefano’s statement at the press conference, which he later said mirrored one he made last March, that New Haven would accept legislatively guaranteed runway maximum lengths at the airport. One of East Haven’s concerns is that officials wanted to expand the runway by 1,000 feet, which DeStefano said would not need to happen.
Almon said in the interview that she would consider legislatively guaranteed runway length maximums. But DeStefano said the subject had come up months ago and her suggestion that this was a new wrinkle is “inaccurate.” He said he feels “like we are shadow boxing.”
In her press handout, Almon said the best resolution to the problem is “to decide once and for all that Tweed is a small, private aviation airport with limited commercial service… We do not oppose safety improvements, but we do oppose expansion.”
DeStefano, both at the press conference and after, said New Haven needs a commercial airport in order to grow as a business hub, especially since all the work to make it the kind of airport the city needs is to be done on land the city and the airport already own.
He also said that if Tweed were to morph into a private airport, it would cost New Haven taxpayers millions of dollars. The Airport Authority would have to declare bankruptcy and the airport would become a city responsibility, which would cost the city $2 million from the general fund, not to mention 90 jobs and the responsibility to pay back about $29 million in airport improvement grants from the FAA.
The safety zones are necessary for the airport to be in compliance with FAA regulations, said Peter Barresi, in photo, a mechanic at Jet Aviation, headquartered at the airport. The 400-foot safety zone, plus trimming trees at the end of the runway, would allow the use of the entire runway, thus allowing jets to take off at full capacity. At present, planes have to be carefully monitored for weight so that they can safely take off from the airport, Barresi said.
Airport Authority Chairman Mark Volchek said the city’s growth depends on having a thriving airport. He and other officials cited Westchester County Airport in Rye, N.Y., which has been successful despite having some of the same issues as Tweed. Presently, only US Air services Tweed, with up to six flights a day to Philadelphia, one of the airline’s hubs.
In the past, Tweed had been served by Continental, United Express, Air Wisconsin and other carriers.
DeStefano said that East Haven residents would not be impacted by the airport improvements. Almon said that’s not so.
Dodge Avenue would have to be moved 400 feet toward Holmes Street. Although nobody lives on Dodge across from the airport, moving Dodge would force Holmes Street residents to have one street in front and a busy road bordering their backyards, she said.
DeStefano’s staff handed out material, including a colorful brochure, headlined “The Time is Now”, which lays out New Haven’s plan for the airport, including an aerial photo with the caption, “Runway safety areas stay within airport boundary.” It also shows small jet aircraft that could use the airport, including noise levels less than that produced by planes now using the facility.
The material was handed out to reporters, but very little was said about the project, which promoted expanded commercial service to cities such as Chicago, Washington and Atlanta, as well as noise attenuation systems for about 100 homeowners.
Also handed out was a card that announced, “Tweed Works for Me”, including a statement that “I support Tweed New Haven Regional Airport” and place for name, address and the like.
It was unclear for whom this card was intended, since the only people at the airport were DeStefano and his staff, airport employees and the press.