In an age of new environmental sensitivity, jurisdictions like Renton are rediscovering goats as a non-mechanized means to keep unwanted plants under control.

The following pictures are of goats grazing on land near the perimeter road at Renton airport.













Here is a note from our airport management team: (They also provided the photos)
______________________________________________
FYI - we have these goats for a number of days and they will be working the area opposite the B-Ramp along Perimeter Road. This approach was much cheaper and more effective than using labor and equipment to kill the bad plants. Step two, probably this fall/winter, is to replant the area with some sort of native plants.

Ryan

Jonathan Wilson 7/30/2008 4:30 PM
Hello,

Just a heads up - Goat Trimmers LLC has arrived with over 100 goats for use on our West Perimeter Road vegetation.

We have them for the next eight days or so, and they will be monitored by the contractor 24/7.

This should really help us control and eliminate much of the invasive vegetation along West Perimeter Road including Blackberries, Morning Glory, and Knotweed in a "green" way.

Attached are some pictures right after they arrived.


Jonathan Wilson
Assistant Airport Manager
_________________________________________
end of message



Interestingly, today there is a story in the national press about these "Weapons of Grass Destruction" setting off terrorist warning systems in New York City. As someone who has kept goats, I will vouch for two aspects of their perosnalities. (1)They are affectionate and personable, (2) They are escape artists.

I'm sure the goat wrangler that brought the goats to our airport knows this; it's going to be important to avoid airport runway incursions.


Here is the MSNBC article here

Councilmembers Rich Zwicker, Don Persson, and I put the final touches on a new Renton Airport Leasing policy at last Thursday's Transportation Committee Meeting. Huge credit also goes to Marcie Palmer, who chaired this committee last year when the lion's share of the work was done. We put many, many hours of committee time into this policy, and received much input from residents and the aviation community during the past year.

The new leasing policy, which comprises about a dozen pages of text, makes some important improvements to the process of leasing airport property in the future. Some of the changes are:

(1) A clear application process for people who wish to lease airport property. Up until now, individuals have sent letters or made phone calls with proposals, but it is not always clear whether they are "applying" for lease consideration. A new application process fixes that for future applicants, and makes it clear who is "first in line" on future applications. (Unfortunately, this does not fix the confusion regarding who is first in line for current applicants. The mayor's office, airport manager, and city attorney will be working with those individuals who believe they have an outstanding commitment from the city... they will try to resolve these situations as fairly as possible)

(2) City ownership of new airport buildings. Applicants who want a ground lease in order to build a hanger, office, or other facility, will now be directed to construct the building in coordination with the city. If they are proposing an appropriate improvement, the city will finance it, own it, and lease it back to the airport tenant. This will be better for all parties. Under the old policy, tenants have to give their buildings to the city at the end of their lease, resulting in an incentive for some to delay/forgo maintenance near the end of the lease period. In addition, the new policy will enable the city to shorten lease periods since new leaseholders will not need 30-50 years to amortize the cost of a building. The shorter lease periods will give the city more options if a tenant is not working out, or if the city wants the land or building for another aviation purpose.

(3) The new lease policy does not give priority to a jet center....instead, it encourages a wide range of aviation uses.

(4) The new lease policy REDUCES the priority placed on the airport fully paying for itself under all circumstances. The old policy made financial return, and self-sustainment a factor above all other considerations. Under our new policy, it is seen as desirable for the airport to pay for itself, but it is recognized that that there may be occasions when the city-as-a-whole would prefer to provide a small subsidy to the the airport to maintain a more peaceful aviation use (i.e. to prevent loud fly-overs.) The highest revenues is not always going to be considered the best use.

(5) The leasing policy gives clear expectations for the financial capability/stability of new applicants for airport space. This addition, strongly promoted by Councilman Don Persson, makes good financial sense and is in line with good leasing practices for other types of real estate.

There are many other improvements in this document as well. As Transportation Chair, I have the honor of presenting the new document to the full council a week from tomorrow.

The tall tree on the other side of the wall is one that had to be removed



Here is the reason it was unsafe




City crews had to take down some cottonwood trees today that were at risk of damaging the Cedar River flood wall, as well as a road and electrical wires down by the river.

The reason.... a busy beaver had damaged the trees so badly they were ready to fall over in the next high wind.

More news about Boeing solving our problems at the Renton Airport! Yay! The Boeing team are local heroes once again. Good-bye jet center...we hardly knew ya, but you seemed to have troubles making friends....

( Read more... )

According to nojets.org, Mayor Jesse Tanner tried to keep the airport quiet and neighborly, and Mayor Kathy Keolker continues to try to make it into a noisy jet center. I tend to agree.






Click to enlarge


Fortunately, the issue will finally be resolved by Boeing leasing the property in question, as long as my council colleagues continue to support this new direction.

For complete history on this issue, CLICK HERE!

Boeing is interested in leasing some property back from Renton, which makes all the discussions about a Jet Center moot.  

Mayor Kathy Keolker's office sent out a Request-for-Proposals (RFP) for a Renton Jet Center without council approval late last year. When the proposals started coming in, outraged citizens started turning up at council meetings, informing us that they had many, many concerns about this direction for our airport.

The council asked for more time, and for a noise study, before we proceed with a jet center or make any significant long-term leasing decisions.

Here is the latest news from the Seattle Times on this topic. You can get more background by clicking here.


Renton residents worry about airport expansion

By Karen Johnson, 9/30/07

Times Southeast Bureau
More Southeast King County News

As a flight attendant for United Airlines for 40 years, Renton resident Peggi Galster grew accustomed to airport noise and loud planes.

"When I was working, I would cease a conversation when the engines started," Galster said.

But at her home in the Kennydale neighborhood, Galster says she has to cover her ears when planes fly overhead.

( Read more... )

Many citizens are taking a closer look at Renton Airport Leasing policies following the debate about an Airport Jet Center earlier this year. Here is a representative email to city council, asking us to be careful about what we approve. The city's transportation committee has decided to hold the subject leases in committee for further study.

( read the email by clicking here )

This would have been a great use of our airport space. I've seen Paul Allen's airplane collection (the public can arrange tours by appointment), and he has some one-of-a-kind historic WWI and WWII articles. This would have been a perfect fit in Renton, as it would be closer to Seattle metro area, just a quick boat trip from Allen's home on Mercer Island, and would not generate take-off and landing noise. The historic aspect of Allen's flight museum would be a nice compliment to Boeing's presence at the airport, since Boeing's B-29 production here helped us win World War II.

I wonder if it is too late to get Paul Allen to reconsider? What do you all think?

______________________________________________________________________________

Airplane collection may move to Paine

By Christopher Schwarzen

Times Snohomish County Bureau

Looking to expand its activities for aviation enthusiasts, Snohomish County is offering another historic airplane group hangar space at Paine Field.

Possibly joining Paul Allen's Flying Heritage Collection would be the Historic Aircraft Foundation, owned by Seattle attorney John Sessions.

Sessions, a past president of the Washington Seaplane Pilots Association, has been offered a lease agreement; approval by the Snohomish County Council is expected today.

The lease is similar to Allen's, whose agreement with the county was approved last year. Allen plans to move his entire collection of historic warplanes from Arlington to Paine Field.

The agreements call for both to make improvements to current space at the airport. Sessions would be reimbursed for amenities totaling about $1 million that are the responsibility of the county, including the addition of taxiway and road to the hangars.

Under the lease agreement, Sessions and a company called Kilo Six would build three hangars on six acres. Two would be for private jets, but the larger space would house Sessions' historic aircraft collection, which at one time has included an exotic Alpha Jet bomber trainer, an amphibious Beaver, a Grumman F8F military fighter, and a North American T-6 trainer used during World War II and the Korean conflict to train pilots.

Sessions has indicated to county staff members that he hopes to show the historic planes publicly, but Dave Waggoner, the airport's director, said nothing has been put together yet in terms of a public program. Sessions declined to comment until the lease is approved.

It's unclear when hangar construction might begin on the acreage, at the west side of the southern end of the runway, Waggoner said. But rent would be deferred for about seven years, at which point rent and fees would cost about $150,000 annually, according to the pending lease agreement. The lease would be for 40 years, with a 10-year option thereafter.

Regarding his collection, Allen has said that he likes the tie-in with the Future of Flight museum and the Boeing aircraft tour at Paine Field.

With a 10-year lease and options for 20 years, Allen is improving a 51,000-square-foot hangar at Paine Field at a cost of about $5.2 million. The county is reimbursing him about $2.2 million in rent credits. The annual lease is about $371,000.
advertising

Work on the hangar is under way and should be finished by fall, said Michael Nank, a spokesman for the collection.

"We're looking at opening near the end of the year or the beginning of 2008," Nank said. "But it will be quite an extensive move, as some of the planes can't be flown there."

The Flying Heritage Collection focuses mostly on World War II- and Cold War-era planes from around the world, including England, Japan, China and Russia.

Waggoner said both leases, as well as the other options at Paine Field and nearby, make for a better tourist attraction.

"We feel this is a very positive step to have the additional aviation attraction at the airport," he said. "[Paine Field] is a tremendous place for aviation enthusiasts."

Seattle Times business reporter Elizabeth Rhodes contributed to this report.

Christopher Schwarzen: 425-783-0577 or cschwarzen@seattletimes.com.

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

From Mark Hancock, Renton citizen:

Hi Marcie, Don & Randy -

Sometime back, I found a list of FAA/airport law cases, and finally relocated it tonight (it's an eye opener):
http://home.netvista.net/hpb/cases.html

As we all know, the FAA is not easy to deal with, and usually wins. Even the City of Naples, Florida, famous for having beaten them in court, spent
$3.4 million in studies and legal fees over 5 years to justify and defend their ban on Stage 2 jets.
http://www.soundinitiative.org/documents/NaplesJetBanStudy.doc

Mayor Tanner reminded us all a few years ago that the FAA can require airport related uses, but they cannot tell us who we have to lease to. It is easier (and cheaper) to deal with things up front, than after we let businesses/users into our property and the FAA gets more involved and has more leverage.

( Read the Rest of Mr. Hancock's email, with his recommendations, by clicking here )

We've had two extremely long Transportation committee meetings on the last two Wednesdays, and there appears to be no end in sight. The committee has realized that in addition to public backlash about the jet center langage that came out of the Airport Study, there is also much confusion about who is first in line at the airport for new rental space. We will need more meetings in the near future to review the airport leasing policy, the queue for new space, and to solicit the input of a certain large airplane manufacturer that we wish to keep building planes in our little hamlet.

I recieved this good input from Mark Hancock, a citizen airport-activist in Renton. He summarizes our conversation and his input pretty well, and I suspect many in our city would agree with him.

I would love to get some reader comments on this issue.

Thanks,

Randy

( Read more about the airport development plans, and Mark Hancock's suggestions, by clicking here )

We covered many, many items in our annual council offsite this year. Sonics Arena, Jet Center, Sam Chastain Trail, transporation planning, our annexation approach, redevelopment, Renton Business Plan, code enforcement, Highlands clean up and revitalization, finance planning, public safety, the council committee structure, open public meetings act, and more.....simply too many issues to describe all at once. I'll touch on several of them in upcoming journal entries.

I'll start with a short entry on the Jet Center. This topic generated more visitors to our Council off-site than any other...it was clearly a concern for our citizens and Mercer Island citizens alike. To make a long story short, the council and Administration have agreed to revise the airport business plan to remove the language that lead up to talk of a jet center. We had language about making the airport an economic engine, that was perhaps intended to refer to Boeing, but was being used to promote the concept of a jet center.

We also agreed to pursue a Memorandum of Understanding with Mercer Island, to jointly fund and manage noise studies to determine the most neighborly way to manage the airport, while still complying with FAA requirements that the airport remain an active aviation facility.

And we seemed to reach a consensus that we consider constructing city-owned, attractive hangers that we would lease to individuals on a month-to-month or annual basis, for parking private airplane. This would give us better control than making 20-year ground leases to private parties.

We were also told that FAA wishes to work with us on all-weather approach concepts, but not until the end of this year or in 2008. While a one year delay will be disappointing for some, it will provide some breathing room for the public and city leadership to work methodically and cooperatively on our future plans.

The representatives from Mercer Island and nojets.org that were present seemed relieved by the resetting of the city's plans and approach, and I think we are back to a truely productive diologue.





( Click here to read a letter from Elizabeth Stevens, one of the many letters council recieved on this topic in the last few weeks. )

Here is another summary of the Jet Center issue from my brilliant and hard-working colleague Marcie Palmer. Marcie has been working to gather input from the community on this issue. She also makes the important point that at Wednesday's Transportation meeting we figured out that the Jet Center was called the preferred alternative only by a consultant, not by the council or the RAAC. Council and staff want more data before making a decision.

This issue is not decided, and all inputs are appreciated and accepted.

_______________________________________

( Click here for Marci's email (sent in response to Mark Hancock's note): )

Business Jet terminal, general aviation corporate aircraft center, executive pilot lounge, VIP passenger terminal, jet maintenance center....what are we talking about exactly?

The City Council’s Transportation Committee met yesterday, and it became clear to me that we still do not have a common understanding of what the controversial ‘Renton Jet Center’ actually is. Depending on who you talk to, it may be any one of the above items, or all five, or something else entirely.

I went into yesterday’s meeting thinking that the jet center was a place where corporations or well-heeled individuals would park their executive-class business jets. And I was thinking we were talking about jets with bathrooms, sleeping accommodations, and dining tables. As I said in my blog entry on January 28, I am sympathetic to public concern that such a facility could inadvertently become home to older, noisier jets such as Lear Jets--especially if the facility is privately owned.

I also heard the viewpoint that if the jet center were built right, it could attract the much-quieter very light jets (VLJs). But after some public feedback and review, this approach did not entirely make sense to me; VLJs are relatively small aircraft, not much different in dimensions than any other six seat aircraft. They could park in a multi-use general aviation hanger, and not need special operating accommodations from a dedicated jet center. In other words, someone who owns a six-seat twin turbo-prop would need a very similar facility to someone who owns a new VLJ.

When I asked my questions about this, I was told that I was mistaken about what the jet center is. But when others tried to set me straight, I found that other parties at the table (Renton Airport Manager, Airport Advisory Committee reps, Renton’s public works director, and some of my council colleagues) could not articulate a common understanding either.

In some views it is a transient pilot lounge and waiting area, where visiting pilots can park their airplanes, visit the area, and then take-off. In other views it sounds more like a VIP passenger terminal, where outbound VIP guests queue for travels far and wide. In some scenarios it caters mostly to jets, while in others it caters to all aviation uses equally.

And as an adjunct to the areas for accommodating people, there would be areas for storing or servicing aircraft –but it is not universally clear whether these are Renton-based aircraft vs. transient aircraft, or jets vs. mixed aircraft, or a combination of all these things.

After further discussion, it appears that the reason the stakeholders don’t agree on these answers is that the city was waiting to see what the private sector might propose. i.e The city would request proposals from the private sector, then let someone privately build and own the version of the “jet center, or corporate aviation center” we like best. (We would just lease them the land for thirty or forty years.)

But such an approach would be a mistake, in my view. I feel the City of Renton should develop the facilities ourselves, to our own specifications. We could sell bonds to build good quality and aesthetically appealing hangers, pilot facilities, and maintenance bays, and then pay for the bonds with monthly rental income—with no cost to taxpayers. We could size the hangers for general aviation aircraft, possibly including VLJs. We would then lease the space on an annual basis (instead of a 30-year basis), and have good control over the continuing performance of the tenants. For instance, if someone establishes a pattern of buzzing residents or demonstrating sloppy safety practices, we would evict them and take the next tenant on the waiting list.

This approach has another great advantage. When we allow the private sector to build on leased city property, we set up a future conflict and heartbreak for our children to deal with. When the lease period expires for public land under a privately owned building, taxpayer-equity laws require that the public take possession of the building. This can seem ruinously unfair to the owners of the buildings, who constructed and maintained the building for 30 years. (Clayton Scott, who we later named the airport after, actually lost ownership of his building under these circumstances).

Forced repossession after thirty years encourages the private sector to construct low-cost or temporary buildings, so they can financially tolerate abandoning them in 30 years. Unfortunately, such buildings can look like aluminum warehouses or even Kwansit huts. And in the waning years of a thirty year lease, some tenants even lose their will to keep their buildings painted—resulting in a bleak, neglected appearance so close to the heart of our downtown.

On the other hand, if the city builds the facilities, we can make sure they look nice, are built to last, and maintained properly. We can make sure we have courteous and safety-minded tenants, and we can provide space that accommodates the mix of airplanes that the Renton Community supports. This is the plan that I would favor.

___________________________________________________________________________

Important note:

The above opinion is my own, and I do not speak for the entire council. And I offer my apologies to those of you who have been working on proposals to build your own buildings on the subject airport property. I have not seen your proposals, and I don’t know who has made submittals. But I respect your willingness to invest in our community and regret the disappointment my opinion, or the fractured community reaction, may cause you. But I would not want you to invest even more in construction plans using incorrect assumptions about council or community support. I am only one of seven council members, so I don’t know how this question will resolve itself. If the City were to build a city facility, and lease space, it would seem fair to me that those of you who have submitted proposals would be at the front of the line for lease consideration. I’m not sure of the legal issues however, so I could not promise how this would work out.

Our Airport has been the subject of a master-planning process for several years, and a number of airport options are currently on the table for community and council consideration. Among the options, is the creation of a corporate jet center.

I opposed this concept along with former-mayor Jesse Tanner many years ago, but have been more open-minded this time around due to the innovation of Very Light Jets(VLJs) along with quieter jets in general. I have been anxious for council and the public to get more information on this option, and I am pleased that a series of open houses is scheduled to gather input. Given the passion in the council mail, and email, on this topic, I also decided to post my own analysis of the situation, and get input from a sampling of the public on a Myspace blog. While the letters, open house data, and web-log input are still coming in, I can see already that the public understands this topic well enough to know that many, many people (and perhaps most) do not want a corporate jet center.

My Myspace Blog on this topic, and the comments I received back, are available by clicking here

Even if merely 20% of the public hated this idea, I don't think we should do it. We don't need to create divisiveness in our community over this issue, since there are many other ways that the airport can serve us. The problem with the jet center is once it is built, it would be impossible to get rid of if it created division and anger. Many of us remember a public backlash against a helicopter operator at the airport ten years ago, and we were counting the days until we could get them out of their lease....fortunately they had not built special facilities to accommodate them.

I have not spoken to any other council members about my recent position on the jet center, and we do not meet tomorrow night since it is a fifth Monday; council members will find out my view along with the public by reading this livejournal entry. (Council collegues, I hope none of you are too disappointed in my position on this, but this is how I see it.)

It sounds like a restaurant and new general aviation hangers would get pretty wide approval, so that is the direction I think we should head. Please feel free to leave comments below.

Best Wishes,

Randy

Several members of the public have asked me about the construction occurring at our airport. I'm delighted to report that the airport entrance is receiving a long overdue face lift and modernization. The landscape, signage, and hardscape details are being reworked as shown in the drawing above. In addition, the new entrance will feature a beautiful statue and world signpost commemorating Clayton Scott, the revered Boeing test pilot lending his name to our airport.

Click Here to read more about Clayton Scott in Boeing Frontiers Magazine

The airport improvements are being completed with a combination of private funds and airport enterprise funds (money generated by the airport that is required by law to be earmarked for the airport).